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SAGE STUFFING 



GREEN GOSLINGS; 



SAWS FOR THE GOOSE AND SAWS FOR THE GANDEE 



/£- 



BY TILE , 

HON. HUGH ROWLEY, 

AUTHOR OF "PUNIANA," "GATWOSAGAMMON," ETCt 



J, J - • 







WITH ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR. 
ENGRAVED BY THE BROTHERS DALZIEL. 



LONDON : 

George Routledge and Sons, 

THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE. 

NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET. 

I8 7 2, 



Or 



J J. 




DEDICATED 



TO MY MOTHER. 



SAGE STUFFING FOR GREEN GOSLINGS; 



SAWS FOR THE GOOSE AND SAWS FOR THE GANDER. 



SAGE STUFFING FOR GREEN GOSLINGS. 




AY, O green gusling gos- 
ings, do you feel disposed 
to come and be crammed 
with our sage stuffing ? 
Say, O //^proper ganders,, 
will you have our propa- 
ganda ? $ay, O ducks, de- 
licious little ducks, can you 
duckline our seasoning ? 
Say, O ye pretty small- 
footed donkeys, won't you 
Let us, O blockheads, cut you 
quick (if you Ve got one) with the double-toothed 

1 



digest our pointed thistles ? 
to the 



Sage Shifjfing for 



saws of knowingness : O green blades, permit us to mot you. 
Say, O bores, shall our pearls be cast before you to no pur- 
pose ? Say, O swaggering stoopid big babes and cigar- 
sucklings, shall our bells jingle their Proverbial Foolosophy 
for you in vain ? No, we rather imagine not. We know 
that the words of wisdom nowadays are generally looked 
upon as a nuisance, a feahful bawah ! Plato's sayings you 
call platotudes ; Scissaro makes you want . . "to cut it ; " 
Pausanias can't make any ass pause ! Bruyere puts you 
into a mental brotiillard, and you think he isn't half as much 
the cheese as gruyere; you like Lamb in any other form 
but Charles ; you leave your Locke unopened ; you don't 
care to save your Bacon ; Tupper isn't tuppermost in your 
thoughts ; unint-Horace-ting to you is Horace, unless at 
Asscott or Donkeystir ; you can't bear moral songs, much 
less SurTer-gless — poor old Sophocles, and, agilis viridisqne, 
senectns, Paddy Green ! If any one recommend you to 
Goethe entire animal with the most Schillerbrated Germans, 
or Shakespeare, you only answer, "Mon cher, Shakespeare 
deja d' ennui ;" you like meandering more than Menander- 
ing ; you probably know Laura, but your ignorance of 
Petrarch is depLaurable ; you think more of your whiskers 
than your wits — more of inScipioent moustachios than 
Scipio ; more of your boots than your brains— you won't 
have a Bunyan if you can help it ; though Young, your 
" Night Thoughts " are really .... well .... not 
worth much : you affect venal Jews more than Juvenal ; 



Green Goslings. 



quite Bulwerser Lord Lytton by skipping every word but 
the story in his books ; pass Vi(r)gils and fasts .... 
over; sacrifice Xenophon to a scene of fun; and consume the 
midnight oil on the sole condition that it be intimately 
blended with vinegar, mustard, lobsters, &c, &c, &c, et 
cetera. 

Why is this, O gobe-mouches ? Why, O why is it thus ? 
Is it because everything the axiomatic swells, ancient and 
modern, say is too heavily put ; because all their proverbs 
are solemn 'uns ; because they don't amuse you ; because 
they are too dry for your palate ; because they 're a pack of 
old duffers, eh ? Of course ! Therefore we are going to 
sage-stuff you more lightly, more crummyly, more " Burlo- 
dramaticcally," and more easily for you to take in ; but, as 
we know we too might lead you to the undiluted water and 
not make you drink, we are going to try the effect of put- 
ting a little spirit in this same water, a little spice in it, a 
knob or two of sugar, a slice of lemon or so, and something 
else besides, of an everfizzing character, to make it sparkle, 
and tempt you to imbibe it, O Gander, with gooseto. Be- 
sides laying our own eggsperience before you, we shall also 
omeletanxfinesJierbesify the eggsperience of others, and when 
our sage-stuffing " rebukes " you, we hope its effect will be 
to make some of you pull up the green blinds of unwisdom 
which so many of you will keep carefully drawn down, as if 
. . . common sense lay dead within you ! 

We shall watch to see if you improve : we know you, O 

1—3 



Sage Stuffing for 



Goslings, as we meet you every day in the Row, at the club, 
at the play; we sit next you on the same coaches, dine at 
the same houses, drink sherry with you at Poole's, stop at 
the same places, sail in the same yots, stalk the same dears, 
hunt the same game, flirt with the same women ; for the 
spirit of Fun is — everywhere, 

" A chiel 's amang ye takin' notes, 
An' faith he'll prent it;" 

but don't, please do not be angry ; for remember — it *s only 
written in 




*%M^M < 



Wmp- 




READER, dear Reader, we are about to commence pessi- 
misticising and sage-stuffing you ; we are about to give you 
a sharp sauce, which is equally sauce for the goose and sauce 
for the gander — of our own manufacture ; you may perhaps 
— it is not impossible — now and then find us using the in- 
gredients of others as our own ; but remember, if you should, 
that we only so use them as our hone to sharpen our dull 
edge or blunt point upon them, not that we should have the 
very faintest scruple in using anybody else's jokes, ideas, 
etc., if cribbing and plagiarism were in our line, inasmuch as 
no end of people use ours ; but as it isn't, we don't, except, 
as we say, as a hone. If you are already sage (you may be, 
que scais-jef) you can, and most probably will, quote our 
sagejestsions to your less wise friends and acquaintance. . 
. . as your own; but if you are not, as we are about with our 
Proverbial Foolosophy to out-Tupper Tupper, it will be 
your own fault if you find us like the unhappy man whose 



Sage Stuffing for 



writings, alas ! were said to be eternal, as ... he wrote 
to no end ! Having thus told you what we are going to do, 
we are now going to do it : permit us to offer you our 



Spoonful I. 

— ♦— 
Burns says : 

" O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us !" 

He makes a mistake, for you ought, dear boy, to be ex- 
ceedingly thankful, for the sake of your own peace of mind, 
that it is impossible ; and impossible it is, as . . you 'd 
have to get behind your own back to do it ! 

Know thyself, says the sage. Quite so. Ha ! ha ! by all 
means know thyself, but — tell it not in Bath, publish it not 
in the streets of Brighton — don't, pray don't, let anybody 
else know — what yon know. 

The difference between " a good man " and " a good feller " 
is simply e?^rmous. The difference between " a good 
woman " and a good-looking one, is even more stupendous. 

"The D — v — 1," they say, "is not so black as he is 
painted." Dear reader, you may feel quite certain that he 
is exactly the colour — yon like best ! 

You like young ladies : of course you do ! we should 
utterly despise you if you did not, for what can be more 



Green Goslings. 



entrancing ? nevertheless, you take our advice, and, if you 
would get on — don't neglect the more olderly ones. 

A beautiful woman with no feeling, no soul, is like — a 
silk stocking with no — no — no — ankle in it. 

Definition of a woman who paints : ahem 1 — — The 
Lady of the Lake ! 

When lovely woman stoops to folly, 
She does it cos she thinks it 's jolly. 

Oh stoopid stoopid stooping stoopid females ! ! 

Gentle Reader, pardon our exceedingly mild sarcasm, but 
we have ventured to draw you a black-Amour here, going 
the way most " amours " do go : Gentle Reader, he is going 
to " break down " ! 




8 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful II. 




UST, only just frozen, yet on you go — 
— skating ! Just, only just introduced, 
yet on you go flirting ! In the 

first case, before you know where you are, you are . . . . 

K let in : " in the second case, before you know where you 



Green Goslings. 



are . . . . you— can't get out of it ! ■ In the first case 
the water is cold ; but in the second, hang it, it's—" hot 
water " you get into ! Why not wait, dear boy, till your 
affections — like the more solid bank, on which it would be 
so much wiser to remain — are .... ripa ! 

Reader, there has been more " coming-down heavily " — 
both on the ice and in the world — in connection with " the 
figure " called " Cupid's bow " than perhaps with any other ! 

Remember this, in skating and in worldly matters, the 
great thing is — having a good balance, and being able to 
keep it — on the ice, and .... the Bank ! Cutting 
threes, double threes, eights, noughts, and so on, on the one, 
isn't half such good fun as drawing them on the other. 

Just act in the world as you would on rotten ice 

avoid that which is dangerous! Don't say it's difficult to 
discover its rottenness, its ... . superficiality. Bah ! 
you know all about it as well as any one ; it don't hide 
itself under a bushel, or even a bush : the real secret is, you 
don't want to see it, because . . . . it 's nice ! 

Apropos of skating, &c, remember this : Pleasure is 
selfish : that which is joy to you means cold, hunger, fire- 
lessness, starvation, death even to others : if you like skat- 
ing whilst others are frozen ; if you like swimming whilst 
hundreds of shipwrecked wretches may possibly be battling 
with death in the same sea, don't — as the wit says ; — sub- 
scribe to Exeter Hall Missionaries, for not half the people 
go to the d — 1 that ought to, nor let your charity bfgin at 



i o Sage Stuffing for 

home and stop there, but — much more to the purpose — be 
charitable at X-mas time, and send a fiver now and then to 
the Life Boat Institution. 

The King of Prussia has been called the " Will of Pro- 
vidence " ! To get rid of him the French have now to pay 
. . . . the Bill of /^-providence ! 

The last thing the King of Prussia said at Versailles was 
certainly the best thing he said whilst he was there ; he 
said, in his own German vay — Je m'en vais ! 

France, poor France, for you has commenced .... 
the Rain of Tears ! ! ! 

French cooking is wholesome enough, but an entree a la 
Prusse will always make the Gaul to rise. 

A contented mind is a continual feast : yes, perhaps ; 
but, there are men — gastrophilistic parties, whose god is 
their tum-tum, whose Paradise is Eden an' drinkin' — who 
read it, that a continual feast is the best way of getting a 
contented mind. 

The cook who curries your lobsters, chickens, &c, &c, 
&c, to perfection, can hardly fail also to curry .... 
your favour. 

Paunch a la Remain : A man who sticks to the table ! 
A man who has a paunchant for eating ! 

P.S. — Don't call a man who "sticks to the table" glut- 
tonous, — glutinous is the word ! , 

Whine from the wood : A creaking door ! 

An un-flattering Port-trait : A red nose I 



Green Goslings. 



ii 



A Mayor's nest : Guildhall ! 

Yes, there is no doubt about it ; a short cut to the heart, 
is frequently through the stomach ! 

Reader, Beloved Reader, we hear people spoken of as 
" sponges," " awful sponges," " tremendous sponges " ! Ha ! 
ha ! it isn't water THEY absorb though : anything but it ! 




12 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful III. 



NGENUOUS YOUTH! have 
you a young lady " in your 
eye " ? if so . . . mind it ! 
Do as you would be done 
by ! This is entirely Smith- 
kinson's creed, for — (his mar- 
ried life is not happy) — he 
protests he shall only be too 
delighted to run away with 
Mrs. Somebody, provided he 
can only guarantee Mr. Some- 
body's running away with 
Mrs. Smithkinson ! . . . . Ruffian. 

An intellegshowall (if not an intellectual) treat ; 

The Ballet 1 

Mrs. Eyebury Barnes has, we are informed, "taken up 

her cross " ; Nonsense ! we don't believe it, unless 

. . . . it is a good big diamond one. 




Green Goslings. 13 

Mrs. Skippingtone Smyijthe-Smyijthe (widow) has, we 

are told, "put off the old man " ! yes ; quite so ; but 

simply because all the young ones had first put her off. 

How many a time has love dimmed the eye of Beauty, 
and — and — ah — sad retribution — how many a time has the 
mouth of Beauty .... dim'd Love. 

" Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit ; " no one can tell 
who he sits next to in an omnibus ; clever poet ! 

The most dangerous, tho' most entrancing form of Rouge 
et Noir ; Ladies' lips and boots ! 

We hear of people who have pet dogs " that do every- 
thing but speak;" by the living jingo, it's lucky for 
them, for both of them, dogs and owners, they don't do 
that. 

When about to make a phool of yourself, ask yourself 
this question — " Is she ivorth going to the — the — Bad for ? 
We should like to have an even hundred on our ability to 
guess your answer, eh ? 

Caning a boy for whistling on the Sabbath is perhaps the 
best, yes, perhaps the very best way to make him cordially 
detest that weekly event for ever afterwards : it is quite as 
sure a way as taking him three times to church every Sun- 
day of his holidays. 

How many a " swellish party " we see in the Row and 
St. James's Street ! " A stranger, unacknowledg'd, unap- 
prov'd," is like the wind of Heaven ; he comes you know 
not whence, and he goes you know not whither ! 



H 



Sage Stuffing for 



Money in this world can do nearly everything for you ; 
it can make your home a mundane ;£-s-ium, &c, &c, &c, 
but it can not .... make you a gentleman. 

There *s many a cloven hoof wears patent leather. 

We are very much afraid, could Mephistopheles only 
walk about London, A.D. 1871, offering a good many of us 
elderly parties the same bargain he offered Dr. Faustus, 
that there would incontinently be a very sensible ///-crease 
in the number of youthful Burlington Arcadians, and a 
corresponding ^-crease in the number of padded, bewigged 
old-gentlemanly bores, one is now accustomed to see about 
town ! 




Green Goslings. 



IS 



Spoonful IV. 




ES, yes, of course, 
you, O Cornet and 
Sub - lieutenant 
Lord Doffleswell, 
may get up your 
rocking animal's 
"spirit" with your 
" sp;/rto genteel " if 
you think it looks 
well, and if you are 
weak enough to 
imagine people 
don't know how 
it 's done, but the 
less-accustomed -to 
horses reader and 
rider who would 
become the centaur of admiring observation, had better 



1 6 Sage Stuffing for 

most carefully remember (unless he wish to be sent . . . 
aw . . . flying) that he must first be able gracefully — 
and by Bellerophon securely — to show — 07i, before he risks 
. . . . showing off! 
When the poet said, '. 

" The proper study of mankind is man," 

he was in error ; that is the study of womankind : the 
proper study of mankind is — ladies ! 

The female heart is like iron, softest when warmest ; we 
should then attack it whilst it 's ma/eable ! 

"When other hearts and other lips their tales of love 
shall," etc., etc., etc., if you are a lady go and tell your 
husband immediately ! if you are a gentleman, do NOT tell 
your wife. 

Handsome is as handsome does ; if you are a gentleman 
— be gentle ! nothing is more admired by other men and — 
N.B., and — by women, than — gentlemanliness ! 

Let the only thing low about you be . . . your voice ! 

Only do half as well as — you would be done by y and 
what an agreeable fellow you will be. 

We hear people spoken of as being " no better than they 
ought to be " ! This is very sad, considering the height of 
the 1 87 1 standard of goodness! 

Habit and custom become, like use, a sort of second 
nature ; the habit or custom of not using pockethandker- 
chiefs sufficiently often to very young children is most 



Green Goslings. 17 

highly to be reprehended ; as is also the habit or custom 
older children have, of chewing and sucking toothpicks, — 
noisily chewing and sucking them — to show, we can only 
presume, they have had some dinner! Ah, goslings, your 
hundred stoopid little tricks ! do stop 'em before they be- 
come a habit ; dent chew toothpicks, and, oh, please do 
not rattle a lot of loose sovereigns, etc., hi your trowsers 
pockets ; you ' ve no idea how you bore people, whose teeth 
are not defective, but whose supply of sovereigns, perhaps 
. ... is! 

Do you know what the " Cinque Cento " is ? Do you ? 
Not you : well, we '11 tell you ; it is the love of Mammon, 
simply the unutterably snobbish worship of money ; let us 
call it .... £ s. <f.-eism : if that 's not the Chink we 're 
chained to, every man Jack of us, and woman too, we can't 
very well say what e ls e is ! 

Of two evils choose the lesser; of two fools . . . 
the richer. 

Many a man who passes through life simply as " an 
agreeable diner-out " might have done wonders if he had 
only been poorer/ Competence and toomanyironsinthe- 
fireishness squash talent. How hod it is, yet many a fellow 
who is contented to be considered only "a brick," at the 
bottom of the ladder, might, we trow well, with his cements 
talents, have im-mortar-lized himself if he had been wwable 

to " come down with the dust ; " if he had only been 

"hard up." 



1 8 Sage Stuffing for 

The difference between being a Rochefoucauld and 

a riche fou call'd is — immense : rich fools would do well to 
try and lessen it ; however, of two evils choose the lesser. 
Better be a rich fool than a poor one, any day. 

O reader, youthful, roving, racing, riding, hippomaniacal 
reader, O remember this. 

The medi-evif bold baronial swell's " Fastness " . . '. . 
preserved him: the 1871 swell's fastness does pre-cisely 
. . . . the other thing ! 

The medievil bold baronial swell's fastness enabled him 
to rob and plunder with impunity; the 1871 swell's fastness 
simply enables people to rob and plunder .... him ! 

The medievil b. b. swell's fastness was fortified ; the 1871 
swell's fastness is ... . forty-per-cent-ified ! 

The medievil bold baronial swell in his fastness used to 
keep captives waiting for ransom ; the 1 87 1 swell in his 
fastness thinks far more of keeping himself captive-ating 
and handsome ! 

The medievil bold baronial swell in his fastness used 
"the bill" and drew the bow; but the 1871 swell in his 
fastness uses up the beau by ... . drawing the bill ! 

And, the medievil bold baronial swell had in his fastness 
. . . . dzmjons ; but the 1871 swell has in his fastness 
only . . . . dans, without any jons, no chance what- 
ever . . . . of paying them ! ! 

Oh! be advised, ye swells, in your 1871 Fastness! de- 
narcotize yourselves from the mental De-Quinceyfications 



Green Goslings. 



19 



of its vapid but intoxicating pleasures ere it become — for 
you— a ruin and tumble about your ears ; let not its ivy, 
its parasites, cling to you, and thrive on your decay ! 

Oh, be warned in time, ye 1871 swells in your modern 
Castle of Indolence ! take its moat .... out of your 
eye ! beware of its awful cells ! pay less attention to the fit 
of its drawbridges ! think of the expense of its keep ! and 
— raze it, don't race it .... to the ground ! 




20 



Sage Stuffing for 




Spoonful V. 



^ ERE you are ; pictorial 



advice to meddling 
people who always 
like to try and find 
out a woman's H, 

S how old she is . . 

- . . Letter H alone ! 
Here you are; the 
much wanted letter 

J H for the Greek al- 
phabet — for which, 



by-the-bye, the "curry-comb-o-ontes akaioi" ought to thank 
us — a lovely Grecian bent one ! Here you are ; the letter 
H Lord Byron, or whoever wrote the celebrated conundrum, 
meant, when he said (it 's too long to quote the whole of it) 



Green Goslings. 21 

Without it the ensign and middy should roam, 

But law-suits for him who expels it from home ! 

It presides o'er man's happiness, honour, and health, 

Is the prop of his house, and .... the end of his wealth. 

You tell us it's not an H-ural position ; but, que foolez vous, 
is that our fault ? No, it 's yours, dear Sir and Madam : 
you insist upon admiring it, and nothing evidently will 
make you drop it ! 

"The Golden Age;" A.D. 1871 ! .... N.B.— Hair- 
dye ! 

Whenever by any chance we go through the Burlington 
Arcade, which is seldom, as our bootmaker lives in it (we 
don't care to be Buhl-ied, tho' we Bernau malice), whenever 
we do go through it, we are sure, quite certain to meet that 
ptit creve Toddlekins (Toddlekins' house by-the-bye where 
Mrs. Toddlekins lives is a trifle beyond Windsor), and at last 
we rather twit him with his Arcadian rambling, say "sly 
dog," and the usual amount of feeble, feeble twaddle one 
always employs when wishing to flatter a man by making 
him think himself a gay Lothario, an 1871 Zampa ; but 
Toddlekins is equal to the occasion : he spurns, he scorns 
the implied accusations of Dongiovarneyism, and assures 
us, quite seriously (Ha ! ha !), quite seriously, that his doctor 
(it 's too ridiculous) that his medical adviser, his physician, 
has ordered — N.B., please observe — "ordered" — his Bur- 
lington Arcade promenade, that being such a nice . . . . 
DRY place. 



22 Sage St tiffing for 

The other day Smyijthe, when he started his new mail 
phaeton, completely overran the constable ! ! We are happy 
to say the constable was not at all injured. 

P.S. — Smyijthe was. 

Somebody once asked "what is a guinea?" Do j/ou 
know the real value of a pound ? If not, just try and earn 
a few ; you '11 soon find out ! 

We all know the upshot — or down-shot rather — of sitting 
between two stools ; but how about sitting between two 
fools ? isn't the im-idiot neighbourhood of an ass as bad ? 
Eh ? Rather. 

Familiarity, dearest Mrs. Jarmingal, breeds .... all 
sorts of things, but among the most to be dreaded of her 
children are satiety, indifference, and contempt ! We are 
perfectly aware that some people consider it " the thing " to 
crimp the hair, to put it in curl-papers, and otherwise pre- 
pare for making themselves look beautiful on the morrow ; 
but, belle dame — we put it you as mildly as possible — what, 
now what does your sposo think of it ? how does he like the 
private over-night arrangements — your night cap-pillar-y 
preparations — which you make for the sake of obtaining 
" Society's " valuable (?) admiration next day ? does he con- 
sider the game worth the pair of candles you invariably use 
over it ? Remember, dear Mrs. Jarmingal, he fell in love 
with you .... when you were " got up " (number one 
in the programme), and he may — it is not impossible — fall 
out again if you are never more so — for him ! Is it fair — 



Green Uostings. 



23 



to say nothing of untidy slippers, curl-papers, curling-tongs, 
sticky glycerine paste, &c, &c, &c, ct cetera, is it fair to 
run the chance of putting his eye out with hair-pins (a mis- 
fortune which frequently hairpins to husbands of crimpy- 
haired ladies) and to otherwise— besides this state of frightful 
porcupineism — (number two) render ^/^-captivating all the 
beauty he married to be his, and his only, for ever ? Is it 
fair? No, certainly not. Familiarity, sweetest lady, breeds 
indifference, indifference breeds don't-care-ishness, don't- 
care-ishness slights, slights annoyance, annoyance anger, 
anger quarrels, quarrels rows, and Rows, many Rows, in- 
fallibly breeds wretchedness, most utter wretchedness and 
.... Penzance ! Be good enough, dear Mrs. Jarmingal, to 
Beware ! Mrs. J., you will oblige us, you will oblige us very 
much indeed, by ... . Bewaring ! 




24 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful VI. 




LLINGLY we 

subscribe to 
the theory 
that if there 
were no bores 
in the world 
pleasure 
would 
lose 
halfits 
enjoy- 
ableness. A wet day, for instance, is a bore we abhor ; but, 
without rain, we know we should have no hunting, no peas, 
no cover for our birds, no soft water for our tub : Duns are 
a bore, but if we were not dunned by tradesmen, where 
would be the gratification of being able to pay our bills ? 
The bore may have his mission, may even be of use, if you 
like, in Society, but the fact of knowing this don't make us 



Green Goslings. 25 

love bores any the more, and, confound 'em ! what a lot 
one meets every day ! 

We are hardly ass-enough to try and be a second Her- 
cules, and attempt to strangle the Hydra of Boredom ; he 's 
too like the other party, who every time he touched his 
mother earth was more alive and kicking than ever ; he 's 
not to be strangled, but we may — we presume — talk about 
him, and mention a few of his weaknesses, in order that you 
may rechognize your own pigculiarities and act accordingly. 

Let us — more in sorrow than in anger — begin with the 
" sound advice "-giving bore : look at the four Reverend 
Spanish Ecclesiastics delineated above; three of the holy 
men, you will perhaps be kind enough to observe, are utterly 
unsettled in their minds, upset, quite miserable, and per- 
spiring from every pore, because, simply because, the fourth 
holy man has thought it his duty to give them his " candid 
opinion, and a bit of his mind." 

We all know that sort of bore. 

Then there's the J OB-ly comforting bore: let us ima- 
gine small-pox, or cholera, or elephantiasis, or lumbago 
(small-pox he prefers) to be very prevalent, then he 's in his 
element. He finds out that you have either not, or that 
you just have, been vaccinated ; in the first case he informs 
you that 1897 people expired only yesterday, and advises 
your immediate vaccination ; in the second case he tells you 
that vaccination is often attended with far more serious con- 
sequences than anything else in the world, that it renders 



26 Sage Stuffing for 

you always more liable to softening of the brain, and hard- 
ening of the vesicles of the cutaneous malacopterygious and 
sub-interior tissues of the mucous membrane, and so on, on, 
on. Then there 's the practical joking, or " bear-fighting " 
bore, who is sure to tell you when he meets you in the park 
that it was your house, or at any rate the one next door to 
it, which, he heard, was in flames when he passed the end 
of your street just now. Then there's the engaged-couple 
bore you meet — and have to stay with — in a country house; 
aren't they a bore ? aren't they even an ubiquitous bore ? If 
you go into the billiard-room to knock the balls about, there 
they are with the present state of their game . . . two 
love or ... . love six ! if you go into the library for a 
book, there they are again ; if you go to cut a rose for your 
coat at dinner, there they are in the gardens : there they 
are, in the drawing-rooms, morning-rooms, dining-room, 
breakfast-room, green-houses, hothouses, everywhere ; and 
always there just when you want to be there, too and you 
darerit interrupt 'em, or everybody would yell at you. 

They are a great bore. 

Then there's the malapropos bore, who when he meets 
you walking with your olderly, and, alas, unfortunately very 
jealous wife, pokes you in the ribs, calls you "sly dog," and 
says, "I'll tell your wife, you ruffian you." "This IS my 
wife," you indignantly answer (you introduce 'em — Mrs. 
Portarlington Smith, Mr. Potius Aper). " Oh, I really beg 
your pardon," he apologizes, "but I certainly thought that 



Green Goslings. 



27 



very lovely fair-haired girl I saw you alone in a private 
box with at the theatre," &c, &c, &c. 







mimmm 



Pleasant, isn't it ? 

Then there 's the bore who is just thinking of bringing 
out a " little volume of p.oems," and would, oh, so like your 
opinion of a few stanzas or so. O that my friend would 
only be good enough .... NOT to write a book, Job 
might also have said. Then there 's the bore who is perpe- 
tually bragging of his shooting, knowing perfectly well that 
he never shot anything in his life but a £$0 dog or — a — a — 
beater. 

You Ve the bore too who mixes your '20 port with water, 



28 Sage Stuffing for 

and who chews for ten minutes, preparatory to chucking 
'em away, your best 1/6 cigars ; you've the pedantic bore, 
who objects to any other sort of antic ; you Ve the absent 
bore, who is certainly always in the wrong — for not being — 
absent ; you Ve the bore who has always (according to his 
own account) a Duchess — or at any rate a Countess — dying 
for him ; you Ve the chemically conjuring bore, who nearly 
blows the house up, and does ^19 of damage before you 
can say Fred Robinson ! then there 's the old china and 
marqueterie cabinet bargaining bore, who will insist on 
taking you into filthy slummy purlieus to look at sham 
mediaeval rubbish, and who tells you the price of everything 
he possesses, even to his socks and pocket-handkerchiefs ; 
also the incorrectly musical humming bore; the old Joe 
Mi-ller-tary story-telling bore ; the bore who don't " mince 
matters " with anybody, and the bore who does — with every - 
body ; the betting bore with his horse voice and ossy-fied 
heart ; the sponge bore, who, by-the-bye, is invariably — dry, 
who never has any small change to pay his share of a cab or 
what not, and who has invariably just emptied his cigar- 
case ; the argumentative interrupting and contradictory 
bore ; the bore who insists upon your dining with him, and 
who then gives you foul food, not half as good as you would 
have got at home; the spirit medium believer bore (this 
species, as the spirits he delights in are not real, we call the 
myth-elated bore) ; the spiteful, black-tongued, tale-bearing 
bore ; the near-sighted bore who cuts you dead ; the deaf 



Green Goslings. 29 

bore, who unfortunately wont cut you at all ; the melan- 
choly bore, the frisky bore, the borrowing bore, the pug- 
nacious bore, the sleepy bore, the next-door neigh-bore, 
the important bore, and the invalid bore. 

The invalid bore is a bore ! 

The bilious man with an indifferent liver is .seldom 
amusing at the best of times, for when he 's a weak jeeur, 
he 's generally a weak joker : as with bad coffee the horrid 
chicory 's sure to predominate, so with the bilious man his 
horrid jecur is sure to be his first thought ; but when he 
makes you his confidant about his pains, pills, pangs, poul- 
tices and plaisters, Bohoo ! isn't lie a .bore ? Does he expect 
to please you by an account of all his sufferings ? does he 
expect to gratify you ? or is it upon the dog-in-the-manger 
principle, as he 's no appetite himself he wishes to take away 
yours ? The invalid bore should go to bed, and stop there 
. . . . at any rate till he gets better. 

Then there 's the bore who always jejunely asks for " a 
little sherry," or " some bread if you please," or what not — 
and lets you see his mind is intent on getting it, and it only 
— just while you are telling him your best and least known 
story. Is he a bore ? Rather ! 

Upon our word, amico, we are almost inclined to think 
that the wild bore of the woods is better fun than the mild 
bore of the cities : one you can hunt, t'other hunts you ; 
one you can pot, t'others spot you; one's head is valuable 
with a lemon in his mouth, t'other's is not at all valuable, 



3° 



Sage Stuffing for 



with or without a lemon in his mouth ; out of one you may 
get ham, t'other gets ham, and — confound him — eggs too, 
out of you ; one chews roots, t'other chews his che-roots, that 
is, chooses your cheroots ; one eats trees, acorns, &c, t'other 
prefers to gnaw away at your ma/k^any ; one whets his 
tusks upon anything suitable — for instance, green oaks — 
t'other only wets his tusks with your best Pomerey and 
Gre<?n<? ! ! 

Reader, we are told that by " feeding our enemy we heap 
coals of fire upon his head ; " it may be so, but we regret 
very much, very much indeed, that we mtist say we have 
never yet come across any one member of the genus bore 
who made the very faintest pretence of acting as if he con- 
sidered it was so, or who, in the very least degree, objected 
to such a . . . . coald coallation ! 



C — 




Green Goslings. 



3 1 



Spoonful VII. 




HE very highest stations in 
this life are attended with 
a certain amount of danger 
and anxiety to those who 
fill them : the troubles of 
" the great " are known only 
to the great, and . . . 
and .... attendant 
soot-alightr. 

True greatness does not consist in being a big man ; this 
is a mistake most big men appear to labour under. Beauty 
of proportion does not consist in being very small; this is 
a mistake most small men appear to labour under. 

In Vino Veritas ! Bah ! not in vinos it. In vino imper- 
tinent, imbesilly stupidity more likely. 

We hear people perpetually saying, " Ah poor so and so, 
he died like an angel." What 's the use of " dying like an 
angel " after living as long as possible like a beast. 



32 Sage Stuffing for 

A needless remark "give the d — 1 his Jew," 
He takes him, dear boy, and his Christian too ! 

The amount of " cheek " some people have, will indubit- 
ably prevent their ever being put — " out of countenance." 

Modesty can be carried too far. The lady who wore 
spectacles to hide her n — k — d eyes was a silly creechar. 
Plain ; bet you a fiver she was plain ; dayvlish plain ! ' 

Every dog has his or her day. 

There is no doubt about it, the most beautiful, the most 
charming Alice in the wide world — when her figure is 

sufficiently ample — is "Alice P"; sweet, 

sweet " £ s. d" ! 

A fool and his money, and his cigars, and his breakfasts, 
and his " private affairs," and his conversation, and his toute 
la boutique are soon parted, if N very B, if he is a good- 
natured fool ; the bad-natured fool simply parts with that 

which he knows no one will take his 

advice. 

What a much happier gosling you would be, and oh how 
much happier your friends will be, if you would only keep 
your bills down half as carefully as you do your .... 
wristbands ! 

Be strong athletic stoopids if you like, certainly, by all 
means ; but, please do be natural ; don't try and look so 
strong : please look comfortable. We don't allude to real 
rowing men, &c, but to their imit-eightoars ! 

Reader, gentle reader, have you ever yet come across the 



Green Goslings. 33 

man or the woman, who (according to their own account) 
has not once been most PASH-onatelv adored ? 



^*yyv 




We constantly hear, associated and toasted, " The three 
W's," " Wine, Weeds, and Women ! " it is a very common 
toast ; yet dear Peruser how exceedingly different arc these 
three, if you will only think it out : The two former . . . 
improve by age : the — ah — the latter .... don't! 

Yes, clever boy, you are quite right ; the Old Masters 
are preferable to the Old Missuses. 

We should almost be inclined to imagine that some of 
the very charming young married women who so often act 
as chaperones, were more in want of guardians for them- 
selves than the spinsters of a certain, a very certain age, 
they frequently act for : however, if these pets of ball room, 
&c, Cerberuses don't mind it, and u Society " says, " it 's all 

3 



34 



Sage Stuffing for 



right," what is it to us ; only we should say that a pooty 
chaperons was fatal to the chaperon^/, for she is far less 
dangerous to throw sops to than the poor souls she guards. 
With the Cerberus of fable, they chucked him — a cake : 
with our Cerberus you 'd like to— to — chuck her .... 
under the chin ! 




*-£? 



Green Goslings. 



35 




Spoonful VIII. 



EADER, there is nothing like 
accustoming your chil- 
:5=\ dren early to the influ- 
ence of great, very great, 
men ! Miss Nomer, the 
nursemaiden here, when 
she puts on her smart 
p^rkvisits, and then the 
Ptfrk visits, evidently 

thinks so, at any rate. How sold the household troops 

would be if it were not so ! 

" Without the smile from partial beauty won, 
Oh! what were man? A world without a sun!" 

. . •. . . and heir! 

"On the 28th instant, the wife of the Rev. Septimius 
Godolphin Jones, M.A., of a son, stillborn." P.S.— N.B.— 



36 Sage Stuffing fc 



or 



The Rev. Mrs. Septimins Godolphin Jones, (M.A.-ma) has, 
however, several other small sons who do their very best to 
make up for this mishap, by living — as noisily as possible ! 

In France, ce 11 est que le (snake colour, indeed) ce nest que 
le premier pas qui cotite, in our pays, in England, il riy a 
que poor Pa pays. 

Did any one ever hear a very short man acknowledge he 
would like to be as .tall as a household troop, six feet three 
or so ? Did any one ever live in a very seedy lodging, the 
landlady of which had not once . . . kep' 'er carridge ? 

Unfortunately lady! (land-lady). P.S.— But we do 

hope she will be so very kind as to wash her hands before 
making our pastry, as this " nature-printed " impression was 
in replica on everything she touched this morning : 




To think that Poverty, hated Poverty, keeps us under such 
a dooced dirty thumb as this ; it 's too disagreeable ! 

" A penny saved is a penny gained " ! Upon this principle 
the way to win at pool and whist is (N.B. — This, dear boy, 
is a certainty) . . . Don't play ; but if you must play, 



Green Goslings. 



37 



do it for shillings : take away the £, and then perhaps you 
may find p/ay — pay. 

Familiarity — with your servant especially — breeds con- 
tempt, and yet, if you never speak nicely to him, it breeds 
discouragement and discontent ; have, therefore, O captain, 
a. juste milieu- between the Scylla of treating him as an equal 
and the Charybdis of treating him like a dog, and then 
pcrJicips he will not go to Creeemorne in your best great 
coat ; and then perhaps he will not — to pay you out — put 
boiling water some morning in your — douche take him — ■ 
shower-bath in place of cold ! 








^^g^ 



38 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful IX. 




UNDAY outers! 
Sunday trippers! 
Petit monde en- 
dimanche! Sun- 
day three- 
and-six- 
pen ny- 
Brighton- 
and-back- 
ers : Sun- 
day excur- 
sionists ! Sunday sandwiches ! there is one most excellent 
maxim which — as the junketting season is now coming on 
— you will do well to study in both its meanings ; it is, " Al- 
ways keep your right foot forward " ! The sage, when he 
said this, meant, " persevere,'' " do your best," " lose no time," 
and such-like flatitudes ; when we repeat his words we use 



Green Goslings. 39 

them altogether in another sense ! Oh ! Mr. Tompkings, 
Messrs. Chepe and Gnarsties', the " eminent " haberdashers, 
trusted and elegant assistant, O Mr. Tompkings, when, sir, 
you so gracefully escort two (invariably two) of the young 
ladies from the Millinery Department, who are kind enough 
to keep company with you on your Sunday trips, would 
you, oh, would you keyindly, MOST curly-hatted one, would 
you confer the favour on us of keeping your right foot for- 
ward, only provided the before-alluded-to two young damsels 
from the M department keep their right foot forward too — 
at the same time as yours : in plain language, why the dooce 
don't you keep step ? And you too, O more distant tho' 
not less elegantly oiled and curled and overpoweringly 
scented Italian warehouseman (grocer), cavaleary servanty 
to Susan and Matilda Martha, why the Mephistopheles do 
you not never keep step neither ? 

O dashing haberdasher, O light-hearted linendraper, O 
tasty Tompkings, and O gracefully greasy grocer, please, 
please keep step : to say nothing of the look of the thing 
(N.B., you '11 never be taken for " officers " if you don't keep 
it) we feel convinced it would be so much more comfortable 
to do so : just try it and see ! 

Brown — a rather un-tubbed man, in an office somewhere, 
you know, clerk — says he is perpetually being " hauled over 
the coals " by his chief (he looks as if he were), but that he 
intends to "wash his hands" of the whole concern (good 
thing anything makes him wash 'em at all), as he is u clean 



40 Sage Stuffing for 

knocked over " by it ! {knocked over, Brown, possibly, but not 
clean, certainly not clean !) 

Where scent is in abundance found, 
All 's not sweet and all 's not sound ! 

Wonderful compass Smith's voice has : on Sundays on 
the boat, he begins A flat, and goes right up to Kew ! Mar- 
vellous, isn't it ? but what 's more extraordinary still, he 
keeps it up all the way there ! Possibly you could do it; if 
it 's not ex-sostenuto much, try. 

" Vernal showers ? " says 'Any, who has come out in his 
Sunday 'at ; " vernal showers be blowed ! zVz-vernal showers 
I calls 'em ! " 

P.S. — 'Any deserves to cadjer bad cold. 

We beg pardon for asking it, but is it necessary for 
counter-jumpers to use counter-feet ? We are thus inqui- 
sitive, because they so often do. 

Appropriate flower for some men's coats : not a daffa- 
downdilly, but a differ down (Picca)-di\ly ! 

Cleanliness may be godliness, yet hozv many men are 
there not, who think a great deal more of having a-blue-tie 
on than .... of ... . ablution ! ! 

They say a man's style of dress gives a clue to his cha- 
racter. What precious bad characters some of you fellers 
are then to be sure. Augustus, any one can recognize you 
in your lion's skin, and your Asstrachan skin, and your seal 
skin ; it don't require one to be very z/2-telligent to tell a 



Green Goslings. 



4i 



gent in-stanter, for that which you look upon as "nobby," 
other people only look upon as — snobby : don't be a phool, 
and pretend to be what you are not, for ... . you do 
it so badly ! ! Miss Mary hanne 'igs of 'igate dear, borrerd 
plooms is hojus ! Look at these ostriches without their lost 
riches, their feathers ; well, they don't look half as bad with- 
out them as you do ... . with 'em ! 




42 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful X. 




•EEP-BO! Certainly; by 
all means, PEEP-BO ! in 
early youth, or with early 
youth, is quite charming ! 
great fun, immense ex- 
citement ; but don't have 
to play peep-bo later on 
with the parties who — 
send out those beastly afo/z-coloured documents ; with the 
people who use those disgusting dark blue "wove" enve- 
lopes and letter-paper; don't have to play it with duns, 
creditors, harpies, who '11 be — each one — only too harpy to 
be, however well you may talk, creditor jump down your 
throat if you attempt to put 'em off. They '11 say " Bo " to 
you, O goose, in a jififey, if you give them but half a chance : 
not peep-bo, but — limbo ! Do not do it. 

We are told "to take care of the pennies, and that the 



Green Goslings. 43 

pounds will then take care of themselves ;" we don't believe 
a word of it ; you take care of the sovereigns — and fivers, 
dear boy— and hang the coppers. 

Buying "jewellery" and . . . paying for it, are two 
utterly different matters. 

The burnt child may dread the fire, but it don't prevent 
his keeping on burning his fingers. 

We are constantly hearing the remark that " So and So 
has .... got it in him!" Do for goodness' sake, So 
and So, if you have " got it in you," do, DO let 's have it 
out ! 

We call the Spaniard — indolent ! he calls an Englishman 
— Ing-lazy ; the difference between the two is sometimes 
this : with the indolent Spaniard, ask him to do anything, 
no matter what, everything is ... . " Manana" to- 
morrow ! With the indolent Inglazy spendthrift everything 
is ... . buy an' buy ! ! With the Spaniard how sad this 
is, perhaps said by an ecclesiastic . . . when he ought 
to pray ; with the spendthrift how sad this is, perhaps said 
when — -for — a necklace he has tick . . . and he ought 
to pay ! 

Walk in the path of Virtue ! N.B.— Provided .... 
it 's your own. 

The housemaid who — ah — rises in the social sphere — 
from the use of a broom in Belgraveyah, to the use of a 
brougham in Brompton — simply drops one more H : she 
has dropt many in her time, but this last one puts a straw- 



44 Sage Stuffing for 

coloured chignon on the camel's back : hitherto cleaning out 
hearths has daily been her first occupation ; now her entire 
daily ditto is doing ditto to ... . hearts ! 

The wicked man who is rich is not by any manner of 
means a wicked man ; Oh dear, no, he 's . . . " a naughty 
man!" 

Here's something for little Smirk, M.P., to dodge up to 
bring into his next speech ; it may pass for original, for his 
own — among strangers. 

Mr. Mayor and gentlemen, "the Wooden Walls of Old 
England " are quite put in the shade just now by the 

ah . . . . . Ram-parts of our Iron-clads 

(laughter and brayvo); may they, however (Hear, hear, and 
cheers), may they prove /zardships to our foes ! (Brayvo, 
hooray) may they (Hear, hear, 'ear, 'ear) may they ('ooray 
for Smirk, angcore) may they ('ear, 'ear) in their sea-ram-ic 
quality (immense cheering — from two men, who alone see the joke) which 
we Englishmen have spent a — a — Minton (same two men 
cheer again), never prove brittle (No, no, and great applause 
from all parts of the house) — no, never prove brittle, but 
— ah — but — Breaking ! ! ! ! 

Smirk, M.P., think of this. 

We hear people spoken of as " not having a second idea." 
Pshaw ! that 's nothing ; we know a lot of people who 
haven't even a first one. 

The part of the Park men like to bask in — alone: The 
Lady's smile. 



Green Goslings. 45 

Dining with " the Blues," and having the blues at dinner, 
is not in the least the same thing. 

The difference between having a swell face and a swellV 
face is very unpleasant, is very distressing, is most disagree- 
able. 

You may learn something from the very greatest fool 
. . . . what NOT to do ! 

Many a man who is put up for " a club " gets it : 



■»: 



I 



Ahem ! three black balls ! and rely upon it that — to make 
it quite perfect — some mauvaise languc, some kind friend, 
will most certainly be found only too ready, and willing, to 
supply the little black tail afterwards ' 

Reader, gentle reader, never act against a conviction, 
never : if you feel that you are about to commit a sottise — 
in plain language, about to make a thundering ass of your- 
self — refrain ! and let no amount of bamboozlement make 
you leave off refraining. Look at Bridges Loader, below: he 
acted — against a conviction ; observe the result. Disagree- 
able, eh ? Very much so, indeed, and this is how it happened. 

You know the way amateur theatrical dresses, sent down 
to country houses, invariably arrive incomplete : Charles II. 



46 Sage Stuffing for 

gets no wig, and — unless some lady will take compassion 
on him, and kindly lend him one of her evening head- 
dresses, a curled one — has to appear cropped like a convict 
or a cornet ; or Claude gets no white tights, and has to 
adore his Pauline in his own black velvet knickerbockers ; 
well, it was something like this happened to Bridges Loader 
with his dress as "The Assassin of Henry of Navarre:" 

and he will navarre forget it. He got no sword ; but, 

as he had to run a sword slap through poor Henery, a sword 
was indispensable : he got, as you can perceive, his legs all 
right, ones warranted not to come down or turn round — 
unlike poor Robinson's when he did Henry VIIL, whose 
calf, which was not kept up tight by the " Honi soit que mat 
y pense" business, came down with a run before he had been 
two minutes before his audience — but good stiff ones, awk- 
ward to sit down or even bend the knee in, but good service- 
able stalwart limbs ; he got these all right, and his big copper 
chain with the emeralds and rubies, &c, worth ^2,000,000 
a-piece in it, and his &c, but no weapons ; nevertheless it 
was a beastly shame of Clinker, man in the Tenth, persuad- 
ing him against his conviction into wearing, not only his — 
Clinker's — reg'mental sword, but, hang it all, his sabretasche 
as well, which, don't you know, even when you are used to 
it, and wear it the proper side, is the most swinging, bang- 
ing, twisting, boring thing out ; however, here you see 
Bridges Loader, Esq., at the moment of his taking the oath 
to assassinate the Huguenot monarch ! 



Green Goslings. 



You will, no doubt, agree with us in considering that — all 
through Clinker's fault — the imposing effect of the foul 
assassin's adjuration was much, very much, impaired ! 

Bridges Loader thought it was, at any rate ! 

No : let nothing ever tempt you to act against a convic- 
tion. 




48 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XL 




O U T H ! 

charming, 

real blush - 

rose -bloom 

tinted 

youth, sea- 

V- son of be- 

ingbelieved 

and of believing, season of being beloved and of beloving, 

season of being blushed at, which is delicious ; season of 

being blushed for, which is less agreeable ; youth, 

jejuney mooney and spooney, it would perhaps be as well 
for you to bear in mind that Woman's Love — Love N.B., 



Green Goslings. 49 

not gammon, Love, " that faith whose martyrs are the broken 

heart " — is perishable goods ; sweet, whilst sweet, 

ah ! what can be more sweet, for can anything be more 
ecstatic, more deliriously delicious, than looking, deeply 
deeply looking, into the eyes of her you love, than inhaling 
the soft breath of her who loves you, in fact, can language 
say how sweet Love is ? but, like that flower in your coat, 
let it only once begin to fade, let it only once begin to 
droop, do what you will, you '11 never bring it back to its 
pristine freshjiess, no power can ever again make it what it 
was. We are so apt not to realize it when we are well off, 
the just washed dog rolls in the mud to dry himself, the 
just got-up, oiled, curled, and figged out child mouchers 
himself on his cambric frock, the happy youth just come 
into ;£ 10,000 a year takes to racing, the lucky stock- 
jobber or city swell isn't content to try and rough it on " a 
undred thousand pound," but speculates, and the man with 
a doting wife doesn't one bit appreciate the glorious prize 
he has won but — seeks for more ! Alas, we never know 
when we ought to be content, but look to this, if anybody 
loves you, REALLY loves you — and there is no mistaking 
the real thing, if you are so blessed as to possess it, for the 
counterfeit — prize that love, oh prize it, see that it is not 
your fault if it fade, see that it is through no idiocy of yours 
if it cool, see that you have not your stupid self to thank if 
it dwindle and disappear, for when " your voice has lost its 
power," when " your smile has lost its charm," you '11 never 



50 Sage Stuffing for 

regret it but once, but that once, O dear boy, will be — for 
ever ! 

Love is like sunshine : as the latter softens your bear's- 
grease, yet hardens the varnish on your boots, so does Love 
affect different natures, so does love make that which was 
crusty, crummy, and that which zvas soft, zAamant. 

Love is like moonshine, absurdly like moonshine, as it 
whitens and brightens, and otherwise heightens and lightens 
the object it strikes on only, leaving everyone else the shadier 
by comparison. 

Love is like champagne : intoxicatingly charming whilst 
the fiz and sparkle last, but given to get flat after a time ; 
not only that, but like champagne when over-iced, it loses 
its flavour from coldness. 

Love is a magnifying glass, which does not give enchant- 
ment, only lenz it, to those in it. 

No one, no, no one is ever deaf to the voice of Love : we 
have all of us an ear in our heart that catches its faintest 
whisper. 

What, oh what, are widows but — w h eed-ling creatures ! 

Wonderful it is, isn't it, how different, how extraordinarily 
different, different things look in different lights : for in- 
stance, all the doctors are unanimous in saying that they 
think Mrs. Attekynnes-Attekynnes wants "keeping up ; n 
Attekynnes-Attekynnes, on the contrary, says he knows she 
wants keeping down I 

Then again, look at the Burlesques as seen from your 



Green Goslings. 51 



point of view and from your wife's, and yet, you know, she 
likes putting on her tightest and newest and pootiest boots 
on the windyest days, and then you can't for the life of you 
get to see 'em in the same light others do ; but pshaw ! we 
might if we had space, or time to think it out (will some 
day) give ycu a thousand examples, but let one more suffice ; 
our sketch at the end of this chapter, look at it; do, there 's 
a good feller ; well, you no doubt suppose it 's meant to 
represent one of those humbugging little legless tumblers, 
which you see seedy Italian parties selling in the street, you 
think it 's simply an Ottoman with a feather in his cap, and 
a very badly drawn one too, now don't you ? but just oblige 
us by turning him upside down will you, and then look at 
it* *■*#****'*# 

eh ^ How about it now ? ah, things are deceptive, arn't 
they ? You see now that it is not an ottoman, but a lovely 
woman sitting on one ; the pride of the Sir Walter Raleigh 
oh! (pshaw! — Sirraleigho, we mean) the joy, the light of 
the Harem ! the Peri of Pera ! a gal at a Galatta window, 

Shown sitting by the Bosphorus, 
With eyes as bright as phosphorus, 

anything, in fact, but a legless tumbler ! 

Dear boy, in this mundane sphere it is very frequently 

dangerous, and nearly always disappointing to judge 

solely by appearances, for seeing is not always believing : 
we have let you down verv easily ; you thought you had 

4—2 



52 



Sage Stuffing for 



only a legless tumbler, and you find you have — a lovely lady, 
but be careful, O be careful, or you may some day reverse, 
horribly reverse the order of things, and, thinking you have 

got the lovely lady, find alas you have only got — ■ the 

legless stumbler ! ! 




Green Goslings. 



53 



Spoonful XII. 




VERYBODY, from the 
" monstrum erudi- 
tionis " to the mer- 
est abecedarian, 
knows that the deaf 
adder won't listen 
to the voice of the 
charmer, however 
in deaf adder gabble 
the charmer may 
be in trying to make 
himself charming; 
or at any rate, 
heard ; therefore, 
O deaf adders, we 
give you a picture full of double meanings instead of boring 



54 Sage Stuffing for 

ourself, and you too, with writing many words ; but though 
our croquis a double entente is meant to represent a rustic E, 
we do hope it may not prove a rusty key to you, but altro y 
that it may open the door of a cell in your brain big enough 
to take in our meaning. 

We are asked this question : If riches be a possession to 
be desired in this life, what is richer than wisdom ? Don't • 
try and give an anser goose ; don't say " pork chops " or 
" stewed eels," or guess like that ; it isn't a riddle, it 's a 
maxim : we are asked, we say, what is richer than wisdom ? 
but, as the rich heathens and shethens, the deaf adders of 
Society, don't agree, or try to appear to look as if they 
wished to act as if they didn't agree to this, and certainly 
go on as if they didn't want their children to agree to it, 
hinc illce — silly, because useless — lackrhymoe, lack-rhyme-ae, 
which however don't lack reason. 

Paternal, maternal, elder sorornal, and big-brotherly 
Reader, every sort of branch is most easily bent and 
trained — N.B. — Especially the " Olive branch " — when 
young ! An old dog learns no new tricks — unless he 's " a 
sad dog :" if you want to teach him anything you must take 
him in statu puppy-lari, whilst he 's a puppy : so 't is with 
your olive branches : then is the time to see that erotics 
and erratics sap not away the rising sap of sapience in 
the olive branch's brain ; then is the time to see that the 

olive b.'s mind is^not undermin'd with trash ; then is 

the time to see that the olive b.'s " food for thought " is not 



Green Goslings. 



55 



only toothsome, but digestible and — nourishing ! You don't 
give babies in arms beefsteak pudding with horse-radish 
sauce and stewed mushrooms " removed " by Norfolk dum- 
plings, with Clos Vougeot or gin-sling, in place of " Lieb- 
fraumilch," to wash 'em all down, not you ; why, then, let 
young girls — who don't see the precipice you allow them to 
hang over — have, even before they are " out," all the spiciest, 



lLIB.1:. 



\ T. 



._-. -JM | : | - — 



—4 



I'^-i 




most decousne literature, that is to be got for money as their 
mental pabulum ? 



56 Sage Stuffing for 

Ah ! if we were not such a lazy d — 1 (beg pardon, we 
mean such a Lazydaemon), if we were not such a Lacedsemon 
in being so sparing of our words, what a lot we could say on 
this most pregnant theme ! 

O goosey pater ! O mater ditto ! when you read the 
writings of Genius (if you ever do?), when you see the 
paintings of Genius (more probable, as it 's fash'nable to go 
to the place where they can at any rate be looked at), when 
you hear the music of ditto (also probable, thanks to the 
Monday Pops, &c, being in vogue), and stumble unwittingly 
over all the innumerable glorious works of innumerable 
glorious dittos, doesn't it make you who have never done 
anything in your lives but read novels with preposterous 
heroes and harrowin' heroines, and .... your best to 
look pretty, doesn't it make you — feel rather small, rather 
bored, just perhaps a trifle sorry you have wasted your oppor- 
tunities so much ? Doesn't it at any rate determine you to 
try and train up your olive branches in such a manner that 
they may turn out a little, just a little, more useful than 
yourselves, your purely ornamental selves ? 

O patres familiasses ! O wives of same ! spare not your 
rods, and spoil not your olive b.'s ! ne putes Papa te tunc 
amare filium tuum, quando ei non das some birches ; for 
remember this, the great thing is — to be a good Toby tickler, 
and not to be tobytickler about how often you do it ! O by 
all means, if you insist upon it, be most pharmacopious with 
the stimulating pil : hydrarg : and with the fullest bodied 



Green Goslings. 57 

blackest doses ! spare not the oily oil of castor, " drawn," 
if it so please you, in the " coldest " possible manner, but, 
don't, oh do not, neglect in your medically affectionate 
anxiety for a healthy corpus, the absolute necessity of the 
epicene olive b.s' mind being made healthy also. O permit 
not the olive b.'s to waste quite all their time in flying, flit- 
ting and flirting, butterfly — flutterby — like, from leaf to 
leaf .... of a novel, from flower to flower .... 
of honied monied love talk ! O grudge not the pecuniary 
outlay which a strong-lunged, strong-armed, strong-minded 
AB — BA, Able Bodied Birchelor of Arts, for your male 
olive b.'s will entail ; and if you would duenna good with 
your female o. b.'s, have so undeniably ugly a governess, of 
such very mature years, that no one can by any earthly 
possibility flirt with her, who will therefore perhaps kindly 
spend her time in seeking to make her charges admirable, 
NOT .... herself admired. 

Lastly, and above all, O ye sweet-scented and still 
blooming May-trees, O ye fruitful but dilettanti Patres of 
youth, remember, O please Papa and Mama dear remember 
this, that as years glide on you will get the very reverse of 
thanks from the olive b.'s for your neglect of their mental 
manurage, as 'tis only when your o. b.'s have grown into 
trees that they learn to appreciate, from seeing it in others, 
the value of that which they have failed — from your faults 
alone — to acquire during juvenility; for, believe us, they 
soon are made to find out that the sharpest and most useful 



58 



Sage Stuffing for 



edge in this world is ... . Knowledge. They soon 
are made to find out that of all the rotten branches, in all 
creation, the rottenest, the very rottenest is .... an 
ignoramus / 




Green Goslings. 



Spoonful XIII. 



59 




ARE you a fluffy gander ? Have you beards, and 
moustarchios and wishkers, and so on ? Or, are you 
a plucked, smoothfaced, young, cavalry-looking gosling ? 
Well, in either case, what is your opinion of the other case ? 
Look at these two boobies in arms, with no more sense than 
two babies in arms, Colonel Stables here condescendingly 



6o Sage Stuffing for 

walking with one of his cornets, well, they respectively say to 
themselves, " What do women care for smoothfaced boys ? " 
and, " Bet you a fivar, gals don't care for old duffers like the 
colonel." Ha ! ha ! gooses, you 're both wrong ; why ? be- 
cause there is no such deceiver as conceit : though, 

what you say to yourselves, only makes us surer than ever, 
that one of the greatest, the very greatest, and most com- 
fortable blessings Providence can possibly bestow is . . . 
giving you a thoroughly good opinion of yourself ! 

" The thief sees in every bush an officer " ! Miss Araminta 
Fitzlowgown says, " She only wishes SHE could ! " 

P.S. — N. very B. — Are you " a military man " ? if so, this 
is the sort of woman for you to marry, for her motto is — an 
officer 's good as a feast ! 

There is now, we much fear, an end of the Napoleonic 
dynasty; we regret it sincerely, for Napoleon III. was not 
only an emperor, but — a gentleman, and England's friend ; 
we should, O so vastly, have preferred to have seen the end 
of another dy-nasty instead ! need we say we allude to 
Auricomania; to the Auricommon, golden-haired dye nasty, 
dye very nasty ? 

Lots of French maids about England now : bonnes with 
no bonnets ; you know. We should never be surprised to 
hear them sing to our lovely Peleecemen "Robert {i.e., Bobby) 
toi que f aime ! " Dare say they do ; never mind ; let 'em. 

You complain, O virtuous goose, of the shocking wicked- 
ness of Paris, eh ? But why is she so wicked, our fair 



Green Goslings. 61 

Lutetia; why? Because — simply because — the world and 
his wife, you and we and everybody, go there. 

Poor France ! Poor Frenchmen ! Your Marseillaise has 
turned out but a sorry goose-step, a oie march in the wrong 
direction after all ! To think that the Parisians should have 
had to eat .... donkey ; to think that they should 
not only have sung "aux armes, citoyens" but have had to 
sing "aux dues, citoyens" as well ; to think that their "Jour 
de Van " should have been a "jour de Vane" and y at six 
francs a pound ! Poor baudets, poor bodies, we pity you 
both, the eaten, and the eaters. 

The eye of the master fattens the horse : perhaps — hippo- 
phagistically — with a view to eating him, eh ? "curried" 
perhaps. 

P.S. — N.B. — This is where eating donkey has the pull 
over eating horse .... you can't have a nightmare. 

Ah ! curry may be warming, but there 's a much nicer 

form of curry than that, which is more warming still : 

Terpsi-curry : for you may talk of 

Getting hot as chutney 
Rowing down at Putney, 

but, give us dancing, with a nice girl who 's a well set-up 
figure, straight as a Terpshickory wand, and a good per- 
former, for warming one thoroughly ; all over. 

Quotation to make on seeing wild fowl at dinner : " T 'is 
now the widgeon hour of night." 

P.S. — N.B. — If it's not a widgeon, but a chicken or a 



62 Sage Stuffing for 

turkey, and you still make this quotation, you must make 
believe you thought it was a widgeon ; you understand. 

He who touches pitch (and toss, for sovereigns, on wet 
afternoons, at the club, &c.,) will not be denied, but cleaned 

... . out! 

" Raising the neighbourhood," odd to say ; is easier, far 
easier than — raising the wind ! 

Having " a bit of a breeze " with your wife, is not calcu- 
lated to cool either of you ! 

We hear a great deal about the " the sac-rament of mar- 
riage ; " Pshaw ! it isn't the sack-raiment of marriage people 
go in for ; it 's the silk raiment, the purple and fine cambric 
and double-milled - extra - superfine - Saxony - lined - through- 
out-with-silk-and-velvet-collar-and-cuffs-raiment they want ! 
Hy-men (and women) don't care a snuff of his torch for a 
plain gold hoop, unless it has a good big diamond one to 
be its keeper. 




Green Goslings. 



63 




Spoonful XIV. 



DERFUL, quite wonderful it 
is how peculiarly appro- 
priate the present manner 
of abbreviating the word 
" number " is ! People 
write number one thus, 
" No 1," and by Jingo they 
are quite right ; for they 
begin — very early in life 
— to think of number one, and soon get to think of— No 1 
else ! 

We hear a great deal about " The seat of War " ! Ha, 
ha, you needn't go far to look for " the seat of oie " for — it 's 
your arm-chair ! 

" The Fool's Pairodice : " two sixes ! (6\ at the very out- 
side.) 



64 Sage Stuffing for 

Rottenborough — the very stoopidest of men — informs us 
" he is going to Brighton : " we are really delighted to hear 
it, and how glad his wife will be ! 

Many people go to four and five balls every night of the 
season : a party of the name of Legion, however, says the 
interest is much more certain to be kept up if you only go 
to three. 

When borrowing money of a friend or acquaintance, 
borrow the exact sum you value his friendship at, for, as 
the fact of doing it at all will finish the business, you may 
just as well go in for as much as you can get before . . 
you cut him. 

The man who comes into a fortune will soon let you know 

what he has always wanted to be, a brick or a brute. 

If he has ever been hard up himself — as he can appreciate 
impecuniosity — it would do him no harm to think of those 
still in his .... secdy-vant condition ! 

Running after happiness is exactly like chevying your 
blown-off hat : just when you think you have caught it . . 
. . whiz ! . . . . away it goes again, and when you 
do get it, you find it . . . earthy . . . muddy. 

Life is just like a game of pool — we 're all against each 
other, all try to get safe, all look for the pocket, all think 
of number one, and so long as we 're not sold ourselves we 
don't mind who is. In pool we are rather glad to put a 
man in ; in life we don't much care if we put him out. In 
pool we do our best to cut a man in tho' it kill him ; in life 



Green Goslings. 65 



we do our very best to cut him out tho' it break his 

heart ! 

It 's a good thing, it 's a capital thing, being {l on your own 
hook," always provided, dear boy, that your hook is not 
" straightened " by " circumstances ! " 

If you are a rake,— save your hay ! 

Let other people make a fool of you if they can, and you 

like it, but don't, don't, save them the trouble ; don't 

make a fool of yourself! and for this very ample reason, if 
for no other, that you only so very much delight your ill 
wishers if you — do ! for pray remember this whilst " going 
the pace," O anserine assinine specimen, that 'tis of the 
wild oats which you sow, other people — make " a harvest " ! 




66 



Sage Stuffing for 




Spoonful XV. 



NDOUBTEDLY Miss 
Blooming May makes a 
very tremenjuous mis- 
take when .she permits 
herself to be talked into 
connubializing old Sir 
Frozedup December. 
Miss May's dismays 
when she discovers all 
his decemberling and shams will be too painful. Even 
" Bonnie Dundee " in his bonnet de nuit didn't, we dare 
swear, look half so nice as in his killing kilt, therefore only 
imagine Sir Frozedup en deshabille ! No, no; let him take 



Green Goslings. 67 

old Miss Tabitha Ann Gorer, and leave Miss May to his 
juniors, for though " eighteen-seventy-one A.D." is very 
agreeable, 18 and 71 a-gree in no other manner! 

Here's a new name for "lovers' quarrels:" Cherie and 
bitters I 

Marriage : Miss-ing your freedom ! 

" Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, 
Which he gazed on so fondly to-day, 
Were to change by to-morrow, and " &c, &c., &c. 

.... he 'd marry somebody else, he would, indeed, and 
nobody would be even civil to you ! 

Remember this : it takes two people to quarrel, and that 
bad-tempered people punish no one so much as themselves, 
for — N.B., N. very B, in fact N as B as you possibly can N, 
— " kicking up a shindy " generally but injures the kicker's 
own shins. 

Literal translation of " Divorce a mensa et thoro : " Relief 
from being immensely and thoro'ly board ! 

The great thing in married life, if yoic want to be happy, 
is to believe, steadily believe, yourself to be all a woman can 
by any possibility desire, and not to allow yourself under 
any circumstances whatever to be talked out of going on 
believing it. 

De la Thompson-Thompson and his wife, the Lady Louisa 
de la Thompson-Thompson, act in private theatricals : De 
la T.-T. gets the part of a fast swell, his wife that of a pert 

5—2 



68 Sage Stuffing for 

chambermaid : in his role of " roaring blade " he has more 
than once, in fact, very often, to kiss the pert chambermaid : 

this comes natural enough to De la T.-T. if it wasn't 

his wife. 

Lady Louisa* de la Thompson-Thompson's lady's maid 
is an impudent hussey, and very much in her way ; Lady 
Louisa *s going to send her about her business : quite right : 

especially as she was not only in her way, but in her 

husband's. 

A boned lark is a good thing for breakfast, isn't it ? Yes, 
of course, but perhaps the nicest form of boned lark is — a 
stolen kiss. 

We are told that the daughters of the Midianites, etc., 
many hundred years ago, were not quite all that could have 
been desired ! well, some of our Midnight, etc., daughters 
didn't daughter be allowed to go on as they do. But, there 
can be no doubt about it, so long as Society only taps a man 
on the arm with its fan, and calls him " Naughty creechar,'" 
whilst it kicks a woman as hard as possible, and dances on 
her when down, for the very same fault, that fault will be. 

When a man is weak, and a woman is weak, the two 
weeks together must be onfortni 't, though she gets the worst 
of it, as we cannot imagine a weak woman possibly getting 
a greater punishment than coming to see (as she inevitably 
will) her inamorato wish she had not been weak. 

Reader, Respectable Reader, we deplore it quite as much 
as you do, BUT how many church-going apparently 



Green Goslings. 



69 



pious people are there not, who entirely disapprove of doing 
in public — under the mistletoe, let us term it — that which 
they do not disapprove of doing under the rose ! 




Spoonful XVI. 




i 



T don't do to " look back " at anything extra nice, nor 
at anything extra nasty : one is nearly as sad as the 



Sage Stuffing. 7 1 

other — dreaming of HER, as she was when she first offered 
you an undivided heart, some forty years ago, perhaps in 
the reign of Gorgeous the Fourth, don't pay : the waking, 
to find her, like yourself, obese, is so beastly. 

In youth our joy has bounds ; in age our joy knows no 
bounds : in youth our joy knows no bounds ; in age it knows 
lots of bounds; it's very much bounded indeed. 

In infancy we cut our teeth ; in age, alack ! alack ! 

our teeth cut us ! 

It is bad going to law, worse still having law come to 
you : life is too short for botheration, envy, hatred, malice, 
esclandre, Divorce Courts, etc., etc. : whilst we are wildly 
making the journey to — Penzance, we are getting old, and 
when we have got that — no more larx. 

" Let us live to-day, for to-morrow we dye " — (our whis- 
kers, moustaches, eyebrows, &c, and living isn't half such 
fun as it was !) 

When a man falls into the severe and yellow leaf, when 
he gets into the fifties or so, he pats himself on the back, 
congratulates and flatters himself — because he begins to 
think more of himsylph than of sylph-like forms — that he 
is leaving off his peccadillos ! Alas, insensate one ! his love 
of flanering flaunting flirting and other Piccadillyuliarities 
are leaving him off. 

If you are young, remember, you are getting old ; if you 
are old, never forget you too were once .... young! 

Age, alas ! does damage ! 



72 Sage Stuffing for 

Much ado about nothing : A man with hardly hair 
enough left to make a finger-ring, certainly not a watch- 
chain, going about the country with his travelling-bag full 
of big ivory hair-brushes ! Dear bald one, " out of nothing, 
nothing comes;" why waste a lot of money on Bear's grease 
and only make your bare poll look unbearably slippery and 
greasy, when by simply following the lots of examples we 
daily meet you might save your money, yourself disappoint- 
ment, and get far more thought of: why not, as they do, 
. . . . give yourself 'airs ? 

A hint to old parties who try to dress themselves to look 
as if they were their own grandchild : No matter what you 
wear, you 're not it now ! 

'Tis not until all his "teeth" are gone, that "the rake" 
acknowledges his "progress" is of no avail. 

How is it all the "night" cases get taken before Mr. 
" Nox " ? and all the assault cases too ; poor Mr. Knocks. 

" Nemo rcpente fuit turpissimus " does not mean, though 
it would be very true, that no one was ever very wicked 
without having to repent it some day; no, it means that 
our vices are like our grey hairs : at first they come one at 
a time, but, after a little, by twos, threes, seventies, twenty- 
nine trillions and so on, until, unless you shave your head 
or blow it off — getting rid of 'em is impossible. 

Many a man has died of a stupid doctor. 

Old Puffer Blowhard has married again. " She 's a little 
duck, Sir," he says, " quite young, Sir, quite young ! " He 



Green Goslings. 



73 



deplored his dear departed first most truly (for twenty 
years before she went) and — rewived : well, tho' the experi- 
ment is dangerous, he ought to be happy ; his wife is 
young, pretty, graceful, and evidently fits her position as 
number 2 very well indeed ! 




74 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XVII. 




HE Latin for tree 
is — "arbor" : won- 
der what the Latin 
for family tree is ? 
a bore perhaps, for 
that certainly is 
the plain English 
of it, when people 
expect you to sit 
under the chilling 
shade of theirs — or 
rather put you up 
it — whilst they narrate its rummyflcations ! We agree with 
the wag who said, " That the man who has nothing to boast 
of but his swell ancestors is like the potato plant, as the 
only good belonging to him is underground ;" and we, 



Green Goslings 75 

moreover, remark that we never yet came across the man 
whose Williamtheconquerfication was much good to him, 
or who could write himself a cheque on his pedigree, though 
we do think that ought not to prevent his managing to keep 
a small one — on his tongue when branching off to this most 
U-passe theme. 

Mr. Darwin, in his new book on the origin of man, says, 
" We are descended from some animal, probably arboreal 
in its habits : " quite right, Sir Darwin, and what is more, 
we stick to our original arboreal habits nowadays, and con- 
tinue to get " up a tree " as often as possible ! 

Remember this, O dear dawdling dilettante dandy duffer, 
that, in going over a crossing, it is better to rim over your self 
than to be run over be an omnibus, possibly full of vulgar hot 
and heavy people ! 

Brown says, it isn't the ladies that run any danger walk- 
ing home alone, it 's the gentlemen ! 

As you never know whom your "after-dinner" stories may 
offend, — if you must tell them — let their only relation to the 
chimney be that they are told sootto vochy. 

It is very, very sad, but, the chief consideration of many 
people whilst listening to the sermon is simply .... 
* Wonder if he 's nearly done ? " 

A book is the sort of friend to have ; it has not only 
occasionally dogs' ears, but has always a dog's fidelity to its 
owner, for, as some one has said, you can take him up or 
put him down, or shut him up, or even cut him, just as you 



7' 



Sage Stuffing for 



think fit, without his feeling it. What a pity it is women 
don't care for books, that is, books that teach 'em anything, 
for alas ! as a rule they think far more of HIS story than of 
history, far more of ribbon than Gibbon, far more of a 
bookay than of a book ably written, more of what they can 
get for ... . une livre sterling than of what they can 
get from .... tin Stirling livre, and far, far, far more 
of a page in ... . buttons than in ... . struction ! 

Ah, what a pity it is, but how frequently are not young 

ladies' heads only like a filbert shell either full of " the 

delightful colonel," or empty ! 

Some beauty — we take the liberty of observing — is a 
great deal more than skin deep ! 

Who says high heels are immoral ? Ignoramass : ladies 
wear such high heels with precisely the same object that 
they go to church (in new bonnets) ; they wish to — to save 
their soles ! 

Where "people expect to go to" when defunct, appears 
to be quite a secondary consideration ; The . difficulty is 
" where to go to " before that unhappy event. 

There is nothing in this world more certain than dis- 
appointment : expect a sell and you probably won't be sold 
. . . . in getting it ; so, though your great great grand- 
mother is always saying " she will leave you well off," though 
saying this is her zvont, don't think too much of her .... 
WILL, for believe us, O extravagant gosling, it is SO much 
wiser, better, and safer, to — Leave Yourself Something than 



Green Goslings. 



11 



to be making toujours too sure of being left something — by 
somebody else ! ! 

O rapid Goose, forget not the fable of the race between 
the combatose tortoise and the fast hare ; think of the 
peignes the hair has felt ever since, pains which that which 
is tortus alone can give, pains which the " broken" heir 
alone can fully realize ! and O learn from this sad fabulous 
narrative how sure slow respectability is " to comb it over 

you " in the long run, how certain it is that 

Virchew will be trihumfunt in the hend ! 




78 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XVIII. 




IT'S all very well talking about "the pale of Society," 
and so on, but pretty much the same little game, Beggar 
my Neighbour, goes on both sides of it. The ci-devant 



Green Goslings. 79 

agricultural labourer, Private Spade, fait son cceur to Miss 
Heart, the prosperous milk-person, simply with an eye to 
her pocket, precisely as old Arlington Boodles goes in for 
the " Widow's Lozenge," when it 's a diamond one. 

It 's all very well saying " call a spade a spade and have 
done with it," but that won't do in Society ; Booh ! not at 
all ; why, hang it, if we were not all, all, ALL the most 
utter hypocrites, the world would be simply unbearable. 
Fancy if one did live in a " Palace of Truth " the atrocities 
one would be constantly hearing ; the wind would then soon 
become very ill tempered to the shorn lamb, and no mistake. 
Imagine telling people your real opinion of them, and, St. 
Jingo ! only imagine getting their real opinion of you ; what 
a lot of knocking down we should all have to go in for ; zvhat 
a lot of black eyes and sanguineous noses there 'd be in 
Society's drawing-rooms ; and the eye-painters (we don't 
mean bella-donnafying ladies, but men whose business it is 
to paint out a black eye) what a trade they would drive ! 
Fancy saying to some Hyde Park Gardens Croesus : " Well 
you utter cad, you don't look half washed, you 're the utterest 
idiot I ever met, and you haven't one single spark of good 
breeding or agreeableness about you, BUT — you 've got a 
jolly lot of money, and with it have bought Society's only- 
to-&?-bought smile, therefore I smile too, and you 've got a 
dooced good tap of claret, or something curious in sherry, 
and smoke first-rate baccies, and have also bought a most 
charming girl for a wife, and your house is in other ways 



8o 



Sage Stuffing for 



well furnished, so I 'm going to be civil to you, and mean 
to make use of you, and get all I can out of you ! " 

Fancy this, or telling women about their pinchings-in, 
and paddings-out, and of their (most patent to the nearest- 
sighted men) blacks and whites and reds on their faces ! 

Only imagine it ! 

But yet, don't you know, it's what would be said, and 
uncommonly often too, if Truth only did come out of her 
well, and the fine old crusted Conventionalisms of Society 
went into it in her place ! 

No, no, don't, on any account, let us call ajspade a spade, 
let's all call him a club, a gentleman, and try and make 
him suppose we think him one : much more comfortable 
for us, and very much more comfortable for the creature 
from whom we want to get un-ceuf, the fowl — not to say 
fool, or goose even — " stuck up " atop of his golden eggs. 




Green Goslings. 



81 



:'• 




Spoonful XIX. 



ONESTY is the 
best policy, after 
a 1 1 , and Miss 
Fatemma Tray- 
! loorde — who'd be 
priceless in Con- 
stantinople tho' 
she isn't of much 
- account ; in Eng- 
land—don't mind 
frankly acknow- 
ledging that her version of " Love me, love my dog," simply 
means "if you will only be good enough to love; me, hang 
the quadroopid, you may do what you like with him" 

Reader, this is an opportunity which may not occur again. 
We invite you to lose no time in seizing it: make her yours 
for ever, and, rely upon it, ydu will -never regret it; iiever 

6 



82 Sage Stuffing for ■ 

mind her having the Grecian bend .... turned the 
wrong way, that don't interfere with her heart's being in the 
right place, as she, to quote what some wag has said, is in a 
far happier frame of mind than Diogenes, simply being "on 
the look out for a man," a husband, and not intending — pro- 
vided he have a nice moustache— to be too particular in. her 
inquiries as to his antecedents, to see if he be an honest one 
or not. 

A great many people we meet are much favoured ; ex- 
ceedingly favoured ; really very much favoured indeed — 
ahem ! — ///-favoured i 

Blindness would not be such an infliction to some women, 
as to others, who — make greater use of their eyes ! 

The height of im-probability : a man cook asking a po- 
liceman to supper ! ! ! 

The proverb says, " Providence sends us boiled pheasant 
with celery sauce," or cotelettes d'agneau aux concombres or 
points d'asperge, or suet pudding, or potatoes a la nature (or 
any other favourite dish), and that Mephisto sends cooks to 
spoil 'em ! quite so ; cooks are stewpid, and do occasionally 
make unseasonable hashes of things, and their minds are 
always going to pot, and their want of " savoir faire" is 
immense ; but that 's not what we were going to say : we 
simply want to give you a new reading of the old proverb, 
if you will kindly for potatoes read policeman : thus . . 
Providence sends us Policemen, and the D . . . . Evil 
One sends cooks to spoil 'em ! 



Green Goslings. 83 

If too many cooks do spoil the broth, only imagine the 
clearness of Brigham Young's clear soup ! the mind refuses 
to grapple with any such fearful vision ; it puts one in a 
perspiration thinking of it. 

Apropos of perspirations, Jones of Ark is the very hottest 
man you ever met in your life : bet you anything you like 
he is ; why, he sometimes absolutely — SMOKES ! ! ! Oh 
yes, it 's true ; we have ourself seen him positively smoking, 
although, Nota Bene, although .... sitting up — to 
his chin 'n' water ! ! 

We always used to be quite happy with a glass of dry 
Curagoa or a thimble-full of Maraschino after our ice pud- 
ding, but fashions alter, and people have taken to giving 
one " Chartreuse " and its twin beastiality " Trappestine," so 
— as we dare say you like to be in the fashion — we may as 
well give you a receipt for making these invigorating pre- 
parations : save you ten bob a bottle at the least. Beat up 
the yolks of forty-eight eggs until they .... pshaw ! 
that 's another prescription ; this is it : Take one pint of the 
commonest whisky you can purchase, half a three-and-six- 
penny bottle — you know, the little straw ones — of Eau de 
Cologne (needn't be genuine), a teaspoonful of ess bouquet, 
and — after putting in the above ingredients — fill up an 
imperial quart bottle with methylated spirits of wine ; shake 
up well, and add sugar to suit the palate, and then take half 
a tumbler-full of it after a roll-up jam pudding made with 
treacle, and see what visions of bliss you will get that night 

6—2 



£4 



Sage Stuffing for 



:when you have ;" sought your pillow "- !' talk about hatchis ; 
Pshaw ! hatchis can't hold a candle to.it 
j: .Try it and; see: its delishual • : ,'. - :. .., e»J 




Green Goslings. 



% 




Spoonful XX. 



EADER, we have al- 
ready told you that 
we Consider it lucky, 
peculiarly lucky, for 
their own sakes, and 
their owners', that pet 
dogs have no compre- 
hensible voce di petto y 
can not talk, and that 
they can not make a 
/apsus linguae in any 
other than their pre- 
sent method : we re- 
peat it; we, are glad that it is so; that your "Old Dog 
Tray " is a dumb waiter, and not a tale-bearer in two senses, 
or goodness only knows in what colours poor Tray might 



86 Sage Stuffing for 

not poor-Tray you to your wife when you got home ; or 
goodness only knows what fearful suspicions he might not 
indogtraynate into her gentle bosom if he were not tongue- 
tied ! We rejoice that your pointers can not point you, that 
your hounds can not, indiscreetly, give tongue, that your 
toy terriers can not turn out terrier-bull toys, and that you 
may pooh pooh poodles et setter-ra in security, without 
having either to get them stolen on purpose, or to carry a 
whacking warning whip to make them cave caiiem, beware of 
the cane, instead of yourself. BUT, Beloved Reader, but 
only imagine if there were not only " Sermons in Stones,"' 
but mouchard-ness in lath and plaster, only imagine if Walls 
had tongues as well as the ears they are said to possess, only 
imagine it for one instant, what, what, WHAT a lot of 
business would have to be conducted in the open country ! ! I 
You have, most probably, already heard the two first of 
the four following lines, though, possibly, not the two last 
ones, but, as we think it perhaps as well that you should, 
we here transcribe them for you : 

" 'E vot prigs vot isn't 'isn'n, 
Ven he 's cotched '11 go to pris'n, 
If not cotched he thinks all 's well, 
'E quite forgets he goes to . . . . to . . . 

the next paragraph, if you will be so very good. 

"Ho7ii soit qui mal y fiense I /" We quote this bon motto 
as many soi-disant good people tell us they object in toto 



Green Goslings, 87 

to seeing the ordinary title of " the Evil One " in print ! 
We can only say, O may their lives ever be such that they 
may never see him in any worse form I 

He who listens through the wall 
Of himself hears precious small ; 

or, in plain English, listeners never hear any good of them- 
selves. Quite so ; and they don't often hear much good of 
anybody else either, unless — N.B., unless — " anybody else " 
happens to be present. 

We may as well here observe that if your "Little 
pitchers" have "great ears!'-' it would perhaps be as well 

for you to break 'em at once — — 

of the habit of using them. 




88 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXI. 




E don't one bit believe in the ancient fable 
of Perseus and Andromeda, not one bit, 
that is, not in the Andromeda part of it, 



Green Goslings!, 89 

but ;in\ every form of Purse-use we . put our faith ' most 
greedily and thoroughly,, for — apropos of sea-monsters, &c. 
—we unhesitatingly affirm that life is like a lobster, natur- 
ally dark and black, and only coideur de rosy-red when one 
is rich enough to - — - put the pot on ! 

And yet, O treasured Reader, the man who thinks of 
nothing but money, and loves Plutus plutol than he fears 
Pluto, whose idea of anything dear is applied only to the 
money market, whose way of spelling cher— if he ever heard 
that foreign word— is S: H. A. R. E., who is ascetic in every 
passion but the passion for assets, who don't think anything 
you possess equals that which is " mine," who cares for no 
races but— The Ledger and The Guineas, and infinitely 
prefers good "paper" to Good-wood, whose favourite scents 
are per cents., and £ : ess : bouquet, whose favourite dish is— 
somebody else's tete de veau \ia la financier e y whose favourite 
play is "Money," who can swallow the heaviest dot without 
having any indigestion, who thinks more of property than 
propriety, more of manors than manners, more of a merely 
mercantile good buy than the friendliest how d' ye do, more 
of Roths-child than his own perhaps, may possibly "enjoy" 
every luxury the 'world can give, but we doubt particularly, 
most particularly, if he ever thoroughly enjoys— the greatest; 
blessing 'man can enjoy. . . ' . himself ! 

In speculating, a great .many rnen go in so utterly, so 
recklessly, so overheadandearsedly, for the "£•* that the 
necessity of taking care of the "s. " gets quite forgotten, and 



90 Sage Stuffing for 

that is probably why, so very frequently, speculating be- 
comes simply peculating. 

We are informed that Miss de Testable, a lady remark- 
able not so much for her embonpoint as her en bone point, 
"gives herself great airs and graces." Ah! when we were 
presented to her the other evening we saw the airs — and 

between ourselves, the traces of the hare's foot — but 

we utterly failed in perceiving a single one of the graces ; 
nevertheless the worship of Mammon (and she came into a 
jolly lot of it the other day when old De Testable died) 
makes young Kensyngtone Gardenne of the Fusileers 
throw himself rapturously into that now almost obsolete 
position before her, its priestess (which we regret to say no 
other worship has made him take since the days he used 
to try and shirk chapel at Eton), and then . . . gammon 
her; for, like "experienced Nestor in persuasion skilled," 
who, you may possibly remember, "words sweet as honey 
from his lips distilled," he is good at talking, and what is 
more, she believes him ! I poooar stoopid weak old woman, 
she believes him ! She believes he adores her, and not . . . 
her money. 

Well, well, after all there is some consolation in being a 
pauper; then, at any rate, when one is loved, one gets loved 
for one's self, and not for one's pelf; then one gets adored 
for one's propria persona, and not because, simply because, 
one is ... a. purse-owner. 

Bah ! Reader, we must be permitted to observe enthusi- 



Green Goslings. 



9i 



astically — Bah ! We talk about steam power, and wind 
power, and water power, and fire power, the power of Love, 
and a power of other things, but, of all, ALL the motive 
powers, what power is there which would have got Ken- 
syngtone Gardenne on to his knee before this hideous deaf 
old idiot except . . . the power of MONEY ? 

O dear us 1 Anri sacra whatsitsname, quid non mortalia 
pec tor a drive to. 




9 2 



Sage 'Staffing for 



Spoonful XXII. 




NNOCENT youth, we do 
not wish to terrify you, but 
when, hazardously, you are 
about "to shake your el- 
bow," remember Mephisto, 
the original Diceheaver, is 
at it to help it shake ! Be- 
ware ! let nothing in-Deuce 
you to meddle with this 
box, or the oldest "Nick" 
i may turn up some de to 
yourpreju-dice ! Never for- 
get " The Deuce " is really 

inside it, only waiting die-abolically for you to rattle him 

up, to spring out upon you and do for you. 

Ah ! dear boy, if every dice-box but bore on its rim the 

motto " Honi soil l qui mal y pense" — not to be pronounced 

nor understood as having anything whatever to do with 



Green Goslings. 93 

French, but as a simple Jine of English— ifcwpuld, as, regards 
the enemy of mankind, be but too true, ;for indeed and in T 
deed— " On his zvalk he may leap hence" X 1 

Mind your P's and Q's, says the sage, and we heartily echo 
the sage's, saw, but of the two we fecommend you to .mind 
the q's, they may bring a man to grief:; true we should have 
no Pyramids nor Pool without p's; but it 's handling the q 
is the dangerous part of them ! as > . . . P's shell out ; 
Q's make you do it ! ! : : ; ; 

There is no position in wjiich a man'9 wife .can place her- 
self so utterly unflattering to Iter, as in that of ,a-q-sir! as 
then she; 's a tail-bearer-. ,, > 

We beg most respectfully to suggest that if you have just 
got fitted with a new set of— of— of masticators, you could 
not employ a more apropos interjection than by Chew- 
better and Chew-now ! It sounds much more fauci-b\e than 
by Jawge ! or even than — by gum ! P.S. — Don't chew for- 
get this. 

If the dentist, by-the-bye, in his advice gratis should ever 
say to you " Hold your jaw ! " reply to him immediately — 
"You hold jaws!" 

When going up in a balloon, as you never know where 
you may have to get out again, . . -„; . . put on a 
parachute-ing boots. : ~ • 

P ens ee fugitive &X. the Zoo on being assured of the jwon- 
derful muscular power of some of the ferocious specimens : 
—If the wild animals only are half as strong as they \ . 



94 Sage Stuffing for 



as the .... as their .... natural bouquet, HOW 
strong they must be ! 

Apropos of seeing the beasts fed, here's a receipt for 
making a good devil. "Bonis nocet, quisquis peperccrit 
malis ! " Bonis means bones, and pepercerit is a misprint 
for — pepper it sir. Of course. 

Good thing a devilled bone, eh ? well, the bone of con- 
tention has generally a pretty good lot of pickings on it, 
and it makes a capital devil : people couldn't make much 
more row over it when they're picking it, if it was — a 
trom-bone. 

We constantly hear fellows say, " That 's hard lines," or 
" This is hard lines," or " t' other 's hard lines," but if you 
want to know what IS hard lines .... be ruled over! 

Never despair, Gosling, never at random say nil despe- 
randum : if you should lose all your money, you may be 
quite certain that an immense number of dear friends, if 
they don't leave you a legacy at their deaths, will at any 
rate leave you a loan whilst they live ! 

Many a man is lucky enough to find " castles in the air," 
Chateaux en Espagne, act as his Spanishea for all the ills of 
life ; to find Hope with her anchor buoy him up and anchor- 
age him in all his undertakings ; but tho' we grant you she 
is charming in poetry, music, and painting, tho' we admit 
her to be solid in statuary, what, oh, what a humbugging 
ignis fatuus is Hope in reality ! 

Ah, youth, may you who pass so many of your hours in 



Green Goslings. 



95 



Hope's fairy palaces dreaming, mayjjw/ never have to realize 
WHY " castles in the air " are " Chateaux en Espagne" for 
\ is because .... they 're An-delusion ! 




?mm 



96 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXIII. 




a 



\ 1 7HEN charming youth its perfect blooms maintains, 



Thoughtless of age, and ignorant of pains," 

how exceedingly nice, how very peculiarly nice, it looks, 
especially when .... female ! 

All young things are nice : chickens, rabbits, lambs, 



Green Goslings. 97 



leverets, pigs, peas f potatoes ; but sweet, youthful young 
ladies— ah! Reader, sweet youthful young ladies, are they 
not nicest of all ? 

Don't, please do not do the Job-ly comforter, and remind 
us that Beauty is only skin deep ; it may be so, it may.be 
only skin deep, but that is deep enough for it to be most 
delicious, is it not ? therefore, bel homme, what a nuisance it 
is to think that all that which is now so fresh, so frank, and 
so fifteenish, or so sunny, so smiling, and so sixteenly, may 
one day become so fat and fierce and fifty-fiveish, or so 
skinny snarling sixty-sixish ; it 's too, too sad ! 

To think that those girlish eyes now shining in their skyey 
blueness, with innocence and milk of human kindness over- 
flowing them, may one day overflow with . . ah . . 
rheum .... for improvement ! To think that those 
now brightly glancing hazel eyes may some day not glance 
brightly, but only — hazel-eye, very hazily indeed. To think 
that those soul enthralling orbs, black as midnight Ere- 
busian, which now flash Cleopatra's like (we sincerely trust 
no one will be so brutal as to tell us Cleopatra had blue eyes) 
and make of every man an Antony, a fool, a slave, a cypher, 
may one day become so changed that, to speak metaphori- 
cally, they will only flash in their pans, harmlessly, 

unincandescently, over any amount of powder (viokt not 
violent powder), causing no danger to the bystanders, no 
effect, no report — save one perhaps from the tongue of 
scandal : it's too detestable, too diabolical to think of! 

7 



9 8 



Sage Stuffing for 



O mirth and innocence ! O milk and water ! 
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days," 



How soon do you not begin 



to turn sour ? 



Before you have time to value your youth, your invaluable 
short, short, golden, halcyon, day — hour ! minute ! ! — of 
youth, it . ... it ... . is GONE!!! 




Pause, adolescent Reader, you who already, so to speak, 
feel the profoundest disgust for the innocencies of youth, 
and long to fight in the battle of life, to be in its smoke, its 
flashy puffs, its sham reality and real shams, its noise, 
turmoil, and insincerity, oh ! pause. And you, youthful 
Readeress, you who are about to rule and direct the destiny 
of real mankind, and twist it round your fingers as easily 
and entirely as but a year or so ago you did the movements 
of your toy man — oh, pause too, and look at this : 

YOUR YOUTH IS GONE! 



Green Goslings. 99 



Think it out ! do you realize what it means ? it means ■ 

it 's Irrevocable ! it means, that before you know where you 
are, your youth is — a thing, a vision, a remembrance only of 
the PAST ! an atom sunk to the bottom of the unfathom- 
able sea of eternity ; sunk, perhaps without leaving behind 
it one bubble, one solitary bright-hued memory, to help you 
to look upon your Joss with less regret ! 

O — (put, if you please, printer, one of your largest O's) 
— O Primavera, Spring-time, Hobbledehoyhood, Hoidenism, 
Tomboydom of Life, how little, how particularly little are 
you appreciated ! O " tender bloom of heart " how, how, 
HOW soon are you not .... smudged off! 

We talk about Wasting Money ; there are twenty thou- 
sand maxims against wasting money ! Money ! Bah, what 's 
wasting money to wasting youth ? What 's Jewvenality to 
Juvenility ? What 's the power of enjoying wealths to the 
power of enjoying healths ? can Ops coming to us ever make 
up for our hops leaving us ? ask yourself, can he ? 

We grant you that money is agreeable, very agreeable : 
that it is grand, glorious, superb ; we even grant you that it 
is indispensable ; we all feel that every day, every hour of 
the day, and every minute of the hour ; but can it buy the 
blooming cheek, the joyous laugh, the timid blush, the 
sincere hand-pressure; the elastic and ;z<?/-to-be-crushed 
heart, the goupthreestairsatatimeedness of youth ? No : 
can it purchase, however much of it you may have, the 

blessings which Lovely Youth gives us for nothing, 

7—2 



ioo Sage Stuffing for 

and which blessings — Yahoos that we are — because they 
cost us nothing — we value not, nor care one bit to — 
save ! 

O ! (may we trouble you once more, Mister Printer, if 
you will be so good, for another melancholy-sized O) O 
what a world this would be, what a nice, agreeable little, 
planet, if we could only all stop young, fresh, sincere, trust- 
ing, tender ; why can't we ? what a bore it is ! yet we never 
think thus until — like the Old Parr-ty with the pills — we 
are getting into the serious and very yellow leaf ! we only 
pick up wrinkles with wrinkles ! w r e never believe — no, no- 
thing can make us believe it — that we are fools until — we 
are old enough to take one retrospective glance at our past, 
which one glance, however, suffices, amply suffices, to prove 
the dismal, the lugubrious fact. 

If we were to tell you, O Reader, that you most probably 
have hitherto entirely wasted, are entirely wasting, and mean 
to go on entirely wasting — your life, and that therefore, 
though you consider yourself A I, you prove yourself A 
double S, you would certainly pitch this book into the fire, 
and very likely write and pitch into its author ; quite so ; but, 
question your own past life about your wisdom or goose- 
dom, about your sageness or assininity, about opportunities 
you have thrown away, chances you have lost, sottises you 
have committed, D-T-isms you have but narrowly escaped, 
and any amount of et ceteras, and you will find that mntato 
nomine, dear boy, D.T. — very probably— -fabula narrator I 



Green Gosling's. 101 

" Ah world unknown ! how charming is thy view, 
Thy pleasures many, and each pleasure new ! 
Ah world experienced ! what of thee is told ? 
How few thy pleasures, and those few . . . how old !" 

Of course, we don't expect you to believe in that Crabbe's 
clause ; but wait a few years, O Champagney Charles, and 
see if too much " Roederer " and " Ruinart " don't lead per- 
haps along the .... Road to Ruination ! wait and 

5.ee if too much re-creation does not lead to 

wreck-creation ! wait and acknowledge, O jeitne ass dove, 
that 't is in going " the pace " you are most likely to make 
— an irretrievable faux pas ! 

Boys in their boisterous buoyancy only want to reach the 
age of . . . . ah . . . . of ^-discretion, to be 
men, and all the young ladies at the Misses Whooknose's 
establishment but wanting time to pass " more swiftly than 
the swallows wing," think of nothing but leaving school and 
— alas, not of the three R's, Reading, Riting, and Rithmer- 
tick — but of the three M's .... Millinery, Marriage, 
and Maternity. There they are : turn back a page or two 
and look at them ; have we made them lovely ? are they 
darlings ? well, yes, perhaps they have a trifle of — of — of — 
purchased " ornamental hair " in one or two instances among 
"the more advanced pupils," and yet each Miss pines for 
one tress more .... the tress which will turn her 
from a miss into a mistress ! She pines to be miss-taken, 
and she very likely will be I 



1 02 Sage Stuffing for 



O " pliant wax " of youth, permit not such imbeseal im- 
pressions to be made on you ! O inane, thoughtless, pretty 
but vapid Juvenility, O Loonatic Loveliness, well indeed 
may it be said " all flesh is grass," for are you not verdant ! 
O silly stoopid delishus but noodle-ey youngness, what a 
vast facility and talent you show for following in the foot- 
steps of ... . Jenny-ass, in preference to following the 
footsteps of , ... Genius! 

O Reader, Reader, how like, alas \ is the folly age of 
youth to the foli-age of spring, for — — are they not both 
........ GREEN!! 




Green Goslings. 



103 



Spoonful XXIV. 




L 



IFE is a journey towards Death," says some very 
cheery old sage ! Aha ! do it pooty fast and 
comfortably though, some of us human racers along life's 
Via, life's flower-strewn V.R. eh ? do the V.R. in a Victoria! 



1 04 Sage Stuffing for 

Ah Victoria Victoria, victoria victorious, but for the victis — 
fe-ar, and V-R-ful Vse ! 

[P.S. — The reader will kindly notice that each of our 
four horses has been carefully made an historical — Italian 
operatic — character ; each one of them is . . . Anna 
Bolena ! in fact, there could not be four annabols more 
lena ! 

Agreeable form — in a Victoria for instance^-of " in medio 
tutissimus ibis : " Sitting bodkin ! 

We would remind everybody, but especially those who 
agree with the Frenchman in considering that a horse is an 
animal that "bites you with one of his ends, kicks you 
with the other, and pitches you off with his middle," that 
Harnesty is the best policy ! 

You know what " Captain " de Courcy Norfolk Howard 
de Tabley Smith calls himself, don't you ? he calls himself 

a " betting man : " we call him a well cher ami, we 

won't be severe as he 's a friend of yours. 

A man may be a tremendous swell at Boolong, and not 
of much account in London ! from which indisputable fact 
we come to the touching conclusion, that it is much better 
to stop at Boolong with your appreciative boolongings, 
than to Boulogne-Xy and neglected by yourself in London ! 

Thinking you speak French, and doing it, are two most 
utterly different things : look here, for instance, at what 
happened to Mrs. Ampstead Clapham in Paris. " Pardon, 
Madame, mais on n 'entre pas ici avec un chien," says Law 



Green Goslings. 105 



at the door of the Louvre. " Ser nay par ooon sheang 
Moosoo sayt 00011 pity pooopy," says Mrs. Ampstead Clap- 
ham. " Non, Madame, ce n'est pas une poupee du tout, c'est 
parfaitement un chien," says Law. "Pardong, Merseer, 
Pooopy, not a cheang," says Mrs. A. C. " Chien, Madame, 
pas poupee," says Law ! And yet you know Mrs. Amp- 
stead Clapham thought herself a very " elegant " French 
scholar indeed ! 

However, it don't do to talk French or German or Italian, 
or play the piano, &c, "like a bird," flu-ently, too well, or 
some kind soul is sure to give out that you were — educated 
for a courier or a governess ! 

They tell us it 's a short sea passage from Blown to 
Folkestone : " deux Jieures " they say : ah ; it was four when 
Smith came over : detix henres on board, and douceur to 
the steward, that made it four ; besides it was exceedingly 
rough, there were mountains labouring, not for mice, but 
for another ///r-pose, and he was oh ! so very, very unwell ! 
Oh yes, it certainly zvas — qitatre heures for Smith ! 

[P.S. — Poor Smith — he said it seemed like six ! 

Life is like a sail on the ocean ; we mostly start in plea- 
sant weather, whilst the fancies of youth, like Sunshine, 
make every worthless drop of spray look like a diamond, 
but we're nevertheless pretty generally sick at heart and 
thoroughly damped before we Ve done with it ; our life-long 
game of pitch and toss, and " the world " feels our indi- 
vidual griefs no more than does the sea the sorrow it causes 



io6 Sage Stuffing for 

when engulphing a freight of hearts, hopes, happiness, and 
humanity ! et sic of everybody ; as in our sail we are sold, so 
are we in life ; there we are, up one minute down the next ; 
some of us get a fine time of it, others most certainly don't, 
but instead, get a turmoil on the waters, and have friends 
trying to throw what they term oil on the waters, which 
invariably makes matters 827 times worse than they were 
before. Some of us get "faventes aurse," no "breezes," 
but agreeable ones, others get blown up by the wind which 
is ill, as it blows no one any good .... the equi- 
nuptial gales ! Some of us are occasionally favoured both 
by Posidon and Possessions, but Neptune, like Fortune, is 
capricious and amer, and, alas alas, as by getting too much 
of the one we are driven on the breakers, so by getting too 
little of the other are we not .... broke ? You may 
possibly, in your voyage through Life, manage to steer 
clear of Charybdis, and not get absolutely wrecked on that 
other Scylla-brated mantrap, but how few of us are there 
who have not to go through some " straits " at one time or 
another, which end by stranding us, if not at Messina, at 
any rate in a mess ! 

Goslings, it is Sad but is So. 

It is not only in France the tongue is called langue ; not 
at all ; plenty of people have very langue, exceedingly lorng 
tongues in London : but this is a theme we will not lingua 
over. 

Permit us to tell you what is your duty to your neigh- 



'Green Goslings. 



107 



bour, as we feel perfectly convinced, from your manner of 

going on, that you don't know it. It is to — to — mind 

your own business. 

You complain of the English way of spelling words end- 
ing in "ough" do you? And you also object to tongues 
not being spelt as pronounced, tungs : Ha ! ha ! quite so ; 
but don't you know why tongues are spelt more like tongs 
than tungs, eh ? Why ... it 's to give you a hint 

to hold yours. 




io8 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXV. 




o 



H dear, no, you are quite mistaken, you are com- 
pletely in error, this is not meant for Smith learning 



Green Goslings. 109 



to do the trapeze ; certainly it is not : neither is it a picture 
of a shell bursting in the late Paris business " from a draw- 
ing by our special artist taken on the spot ; " shell bursting 
indeed ! not a bit of it : no, it is simply a family group 
showing how Tompkingson has just advertised his better 
half, his wife, that he purposes going down to Greenwich 
to-morrow with "a few friends." It would appear, judging 
from the missileaneous assortment of missiles thrown at and 
after him, that his said better half, his dttlce lenimen, objects 
to his so doing. 

From the above most interesting domestic incident we 
may draw this beautiful moral, that it is always better and 
kinder, if possible, to spare our wives a pang, and that there- 
fore, in order to do so, when we do go where we please, we 
certainly shouldn't talk about it — at any rate not until after 
we Ve been ! 

Rochefoucauld says, " If you get in a passion and over- 
blackguard your servant for not painting your boots pro- 
perly, he doesn't so much mind it when you accuse him of 
theft, smoking your biggest cigars, &c, &c., &c." This is a 
maxim married ladies would do well to take to heart : if 
they " make it too warm " for their husbands for thinking 

of going anywhere, what have they left to do and say 

after he 's been and gone and done it ? 

A man can be too " large hearted " : oh dear, yes : when 
he finds room in it, not only for his wife, but for somebody 
else ! 



1 1 o Sage Stuffing for 



Morn at eve : Cree-morne ! 

You are mistaken ; it is not only at Baden, etc., you see 
Rouge an' noir ; you can see it in London, Rouge an' pies j 
Paint, and the little geese who use it ! 

Yes, indeed ; Alas ! Alas ! Alas ! no one knows how we 
regret it, but it is So ! we have no longer any doubt about 
it ; a Miss IS as good as e'mail ! ! ! 

Whenever a " party," whom you know to be — a nobody, 
swaggers and brags too much of his this, his that, and his 
t'other, and then offers to put you up to a good thing or two 

in the way of investing your money avoid him ! for 

remember this, that nobody in this world ever does anything 
for nothing, and that a man may live a flash villa-in and be 
one himself, or may live in a square, yet not act on it, or 
in a mansion yet do many un-mansionable things, or in a 
Row and get you into one, or in a terrace and soon give you 
a good cause to quote " jam satis terrace " with a vengeance; 
for, you may rely upon it, many a a party " who is dressed by 
Poole would be none the worse for another sort of— dressing 
by — a horse-pond ! 

We have positively known men who " hadn't a leg left 
to stand upon " walk beyoutifully at Boulogne-sur-Mer. 
Odd, eh ? However, the Boulogne-sur-Mer air we have 
always heard was very invigorating to the legs : it must be. 

Sweet youth, if you are a scamp and begin to think you 
are not a scamp, it is a very bad sign. There is nothing 
much more stupid than thinking yourself good enough and 



Green Goslings. 



in 



to spare : believe us, the first step towards improvement is 
— acknowledging there is room for it. 

The portrait below is taken from nature. The voracious 
animal it represents, which will eat anything, from diamond 
rings to marble-topped washhandstands, is in the possession 
of the author. It is a very fine specimen. Its plumage is a 
mixture of white, dirty slate-colour, and dun. It is a great 
nuisance. It is not at all a vara avis. The Zoological and 
Charitable Societies of London refuse to purchase it. Its 
owner is heartily tired of it. 

He calls it " an unfavourable anser, or the real tailor 
bird," which you know is a sort of a goose who don't — 
feather his nest, but — but — setvs it up ! 




112 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXVI. 




RETTY Miss 
Dolly Varden is 
so nice, really so 
like a Watteau, 
that we hardly 
know watteau 
say to express 
our admiration 
for her: her eyes 
shine like the 
shimmer of sun- 
beams on a sum- 
mer sea, her lips 
make one think 
that should she ever eat cherries 't would be cannibalistic : 



Green Goslings. 1 1 3 



Innocence and charming girlhood, so to speak, envelope 
her ; but, silly little woman, she has allowed herself to be 
persuaded into following the present idioticly outrageous 
fashion, and has boxed up her feet in tight — oh, so very 
tight — high-heeled shoes. Ah, goodness ! on a hot summer's 
day, those unyielding shoes, oh, what delight ! Why do it, 
O jolic Dolly V. ? Why squeeze up your charming tooties, 
why ruin them, encourage bunions and suffer through 
high heels perhaps one of the direst agonies known to 
more-tall ? Why do it ? Oh, why, why do it, until you 
have, alas ! to exclaim in the very identical words of 
Hamlet .... 

" O my poor feet ache so '11 my ankle !!!!'" 

Even as they prefer worrying their old aunty's footman 
to troubling their old Dante's page ; even as they prefer 
sitting at Gwendoline's or Gertrude's feet to Gamaliel's; 
even as they think more of whip-thongs than diphthongs ; 
even as they think more of a red homard, than of Homer 
read, so do goslings think more of ankles than uncles ! 

Boobies ! do they not prove themselves " tetes de veau" 

bul-lock-heads, thus to re-veal their de-veau-tion to 

Neat feet. 

Procrastination is the thief of time ! it is : the only sort 
of delay which is at all good for anything is a roun-delay ! 
P.S. — We never hear this word roundelay without thinking 
of a garter : don't you see ? a roundelay and — around a leg I 

8 



1 1 4 Sage Stuffing for 

Honi soil que female y pense ! don't be in such a precious 
hurry to find fault ; we mean Henry the Eighth's. 

In crossing a muddy road on a dark night try and do it 
opposite a lamp, that its light may enable you to avoid 
puddles, &c, &c., &c. ; so in Life's road, if you would make 
it a Via happier, let good nature be your lamp ; for there is 
nothing, positively nothing, which acts so perfectly as cegis 
against all the bores of life as good humour ; humour say 
what you like, but there isn't. 

Joneson swims quite wonderfully, and floats like a cork : 
he accounts for it by saying he has such a very large and 
such a very light heart : well, he may be right, but we should, 
have attributed it, not so much to the vastness and lightness 
of his heart, as to the complete emptiness of ... . his 
head. 

Flowers of Speech : " Sesgutpe-dahlia verba I " 

Do you know what the effect of dining with a screw is ? 
Why .... getting bored ! 

People are constantly saying " we can't do two things at 
once : J ' wish they couldn't, then they wouldn't talk with 
their mouths full. 

Man's last meal : Biting the dust ! 

All the world may be a stage, but there is one act in all 
our lives no one can re-hearse . . . our leaving it. 

You may chaff the poor scribbler about his dining at a 
pothouse, but do not the swellest authors equally get their 
dinner — — from the public ! 



Green Goslings. 115 

The attributes of the "Jack" are — biting and snappish- 
ness : as you go through the world you will find it is not 
unusual for mankind to assume the Jack's fishy attributes 
. . . . when in office. 

To every one in the world, except perhaps cardinals, to 

every other living soul we emphatically say avoid 

hat-red ! for . ' . . . it is a loa-thing. 

And yet, O Reader, how many^a friendship gets snipped 
almost in the bud through worldly considerations, and how 
often do those who to the end of Life's journey might have 
venerated and respected each other, get — through some 
trifling adverse circumstance — to feel such a friendsy of 
hate, such a mutual detestation, that they absolutely, yes, 
absolutely, come to dread being ever again . . . thrown 
together. 




8 — 2 



n6 



Sage Stuffi,7ig for 



Spoonful XXVII. 




E never pass a butcher's shop, 
nor hear a bullock's voice, 
without thinking of amateur 
vocalists. The bullock's voice 
may be contralto — that is low 
— and the other's soprano 
perhaps, or anything else, but 
that makes no earthly dif- 
ference, as they both so inva- 
riably — after once being herd 
— end in ... . being cut 
up ! 

Many a woman gets loved 
for her voice, for her ability to 
follow the charming example 
of Titiens, Patti and Caux, for her " tonic sol fa " accom- 
plishments : that is the reason, we must presume, why girls 



Green Goslings. 1 1 7 



sing so much more than they play : they don't want a — 
play-tonic sol-fa, but a sort of a burning sol-fa to make each 
of them a la si a-do-ree ! 

When a young lady proposes music, answer, " S'il votes 
play." 

If two young ladies sing, say, after it 's over, that you feel 
like a flower refreshed with the dew-wet ! 

P.S. — Never talk about getting up a treeo, or people won't 
be able to think quatuor driving at. 

If you want anybody to admire your daughter's singing, 
or your wife's piano-teasing, or your son's wit, don't boast 
too much about it all beforehand ; for it 's easier, very much 
easier, to disappoint people than to please them. 

Never treat your olive branches as you would your gera- 
nium cuttings ; never .... " strike them in heat !" 

Love is blind, there 's no doubt about it, for what hideosity 
finds mates ! yes, he must be very blind, and that is why 
couples, we presume, like to make — spectacles of them- 
selves for his sake. 

It is unnecessary to tell us Justice is blind, she just is, or 
she would see how juiced few of us get any of her company. 
However, don't think we mean to say Fie at Justice, not at 
all, we only say Fiat Justitia ! 

The healthiest form of "B. and S.": Brighton and South 
Coast ! 

A bona fide spirit trap : Gin ! 

A beery month : Fe-brewery ! 



1 1 8 Sage Stuffing for 

A tipsy man is like a smoking lamp : he should be — 
turned out. 

Doctors, "The Faculty," may tell you, by-the-bye, that 
all those heavy " nails," brandies and sodas, and sherries and 
bitters, and gins and seltzers, and curagoas and lemonades (!), 
&c, &c, &c, which you insist upon imbibing at all hours of 
the day, are killing you by inches ! Don't you believe the 
Faculty : they are not killing you by inches : no, certainly 
not ; not at all ; they 're not killing you by inches, but 
by yards, poles, furlongs, miles — fast as possible ! O dear 
Gosling, let the worm eat us when Charon 



takes us and, Mors the pity, Sticks to us ; but before that 
unhappy event, beware, O beware of the other worm, which 

gnaws our vitals while yet we live the fatal 

"fltit ver/" 

" As you make your bed so you must lie upon it ! " Non- 



Green Goslings. 1 19 

sense ! get up like a man, and put the feather-bed atop of 
the mattress. 

P.S. — Wish they 'd feather the birds properly they make 
the feather beds of; believe they sometimes put in the bird, 
claws, beak, an' all, and NOT the feathers : dooced uncom- 
fortable, ain't they ? All lumps and prickles : can't make 
up our mind which is the worst, the lumps or the prickles, 
or the prickles or the lumps ; sometimes think the lumps 
are, until we get on the prickles, then we think the prickles 
are, until we again get on the lumps, and so on . . . on 
. . . .on ... . on through the nightlightless and 
dreary hours of darkness, until, worn out in mind and body, 
slumber sinks our weary senses in semi-forgetfulness, alas ! 
but to make us dream magnifiedly of more and bigger and 
sharper lumps and prickles than ever : both brutal. 

Apropos of making beds, &c, we are reminded to suggest 
that if chambermaidens in hotels would only take a little 
of our common sense they should be heartily welcome ; but, 
hang 'em, it's our Ess Bouquet and Jockey Club they 
prefer, and they won't leave our Ealing-Ealing in its proper 
station, and they also won't leave our eau de Cologne alone, 
but insist upon separating the " odour " from the " Cologne " 
by cribbing half of it, and then adding eau de London to 
fill up the bottle. Too bad. 

Meet a tipsy friend, and ask him to name an animal 
draughtsman on wood whom he thinks wonderfully clever, 
and we bet you — if he knows the make of any other sort of 



1 20 Sage Stuffing for 

beast besides himself, if he knows anything of drawing not as 
applied to corks — that his answer will name the artist, and 
be your opinion of his drunken self . . . il s y est grise ! 

A composer : Arditi ! 

A dis-composer : Ah ! . . . " D.T. I" 

" There 's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip," as the 
old gentleman with chronic " D.T." found to his cost ! : — he 
spoiled three waistcoats a day for seventeen years, until he 
hit upon the plan of putting his table napkin or pocket- 
handkerchief over the back of his neck, and through its 
help hauling up his right hand — the one with the glass in it 
— with his other one ! It 's old, the story ; but if you 've got 
the jumps, it may be useful to you to know it. 

If it were not for the fear of — of — being caught doing 
naughties, what a Pandemonium this civilised Christian 
world would be. O ! if what is now " Naughty but Nice " 

were only Religion, what a religious really 

joyous lot all you fellers would become, and Jingo ! the 
new churches that would have to be built ! ! ! and wouldn't 
the subscriptions just flow, gush, rush in ! ! ! ! eh ? rather. 
And yet after all. don't you know, people do pray ; pray a 
great deal ; an immense deal ; are tojours prets to pray, but 
. . . . it 's on one another ! 

If men would never drink except when thirsty, screwy- 
ness and limpness, tightness and much consequent loose- 
ness would be next to unknown ; and not only that, but 
they would avoid making most confounded fools of them- 



Green Goslings. 



121 



selves into the bargain ; for we feel no hesitation in saying 
that nothing D.T.riorates a man in every way like drink, 
and that the man who is tipsy is not ipse ! 

Vanity is a sort of drunkenness, for the looking-glass 
intoxicates some people quite as disagreeably as the wine- 
glass does others. 

Yes, Respectable Reader, you are perfectly right, there is 
ONE more disgusting thing in the world than a tipsy man : 
yes, one, but only one .... it is .... a tipsy 
woman. 




122 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXVIII. 




mony more, perhaps, than to any other. 



ITTLE can they 
who start on "par- 
ties of pleasure" 
calculate how said 
" parties of plea- 
sure" may termi- 
nate, and of all 
"parties of plea- 
sure " this remark 
applies to matri- 
Union, you fondly 



Greeii Goslings. 123 



imagine, is strength ! it isn't ; if you haven't got — we are 
speaking hymeneally — if you haven't got a precious lot of 
.precious money ! on the contrary, it 's anything but strength, 
it 's simply the greatest weakness you can indulge in. We 
know very well that " Ubi mel ibi apes " ! which, being trans- 
lated properly, bel homme, means Ubi where — mel there 

is a sweet creechar — ibi there — apes monkeys are sure to be 
after her ! We grant you this is but natural, we acknow- 
ledge it is only human nature to think "union is strength." 
But, O dear boy, whilst advising you very strongly, unless 
you are dooced badly off, not to unionize for money, we 
advise you more strongly, O we advise you much more 
strongly, unless you are dooced WELL off, not to unionize 

for HONEY ! 

Jeunesse which is not dore'e, don't — — marry for love. 
Jeunesse which is not d, do not do it ! Jeunesse which is 
not doree, sans £, you are better off sans elle! Female 
ditto, sans louis d'or, you are better off sans lid you ad-ore ! 
J which is not d, without a tocher don't touch 'er ! F ditto, 
without a doty don't ! For remember this, O single sparks 
— and sparkesses — who are inclined to puff yourselves into 
a state of ardour, that poor, impecunious, out-at-elbows 
Love is precisely like a house on fire — it ought to be put 
out, extinguished, have cold water thrown on it, see what 
wet — very wet — blankets can do for it, end in smoke before 
its flames, after having gained too great an ascendancy to 
be put out, go out, die out, smoulder out, of themselves, 



1 24 Sage Stuffing for 

leaving nothing that's tender, only that which is tmder 
behind them. 

You may possibly, O spooney Solomon, argue, as a great 
many spooney Solomons do argue, that " riches don't make 
happiness : " ah ; possibly not ; we don't know : we never 
tried 'em ; but, notwithstanding your assertion, we neverthe- 
less cordially recommend you (remember we are speaking 
from a connubialistic point of view) to patiently wait for 
the Gilded Purgatory, the 'eldorado, you abuse, in preference 
to rushing after a cheap wedding and life in a 30$". a week 
lodging, that poor man's oasis, where your sherry wine 
immediately becomes made-dearer, half of it being invari- 
ably "partaken of" by your landlady; where they will 
blacken your varnished boots ; when your friends won't 
visit you; where "the cat," from what you are given to 
understand, has a weakness for silk socks and cambric 
pocket handkerchiefs, and where coals — bad ones — are nine 
guineas a ton, that is, 6d. a scuttle — a small one — and 
kitchen fire — where your plain (uncommonly) dinners are 
invariably spoiled — is extra ! 

Riches, as you say, may not bring happiness, but the 
gilded ones, my friend, get all the honey, you get all the 
work and the whacks ; the gilded ones get all the honey, you 

get only the stings of the bees, and the cells ; the 

pecunious ones get all the honey, you get only the — jars ! 
they get all the roses, you only get the thorn in your side, 
not a Thorne of the Vau-deville sort, but a deville of a thorn 



Green Goslings. 



125 



without any (tete de) Veau, to which we are all so de-veau-ted. 
Riches may not make happiness, but we ask you now, do 
Poverties make it ? Your present position may not be all 
you could desire, but might it not easily be worse ? 




To " wear a golden sorrow " may not be quite all you 
could wish, but is wearing a pewter one any better ? 

The tup'ny-ha'pe'ny 200-a-year style of hymeneal altar 
is pitched into, and ever has been pitched into enough, good- 
ness knows ! and yet the poor male marryer, before he 
nuptializes an equally poor female marryer, insists upon 
steadily overlooking all everybody has ever said upon the 
subject ; insists upon NOT remembering the one most 



1 26 Sage Stuffing for 

important fact in the whole history of this sublunary spear, 
viz., that though he may look upon his inamorata as an 
angel, and call her one, she most indubitably will require 
feeding, and that therefore beef and beer, and when very 
Amphitryonically disposed, puddings — Yorkshire and other- 
wise — to say nothing of soles ct la Norma7ide, or au gratin, 
Cliquot, curlpaper cutlets, &c, &c, &c, are absolutely in- 
dis-pen-sa-ble to prevent his turtle doveing becoming a mere 
mock-turtie-ery in no time. 

It 's no use your arguing that you don't want cucumbers 
all the year round with your fish, strawberries at half a crown 
a piece, grapes at two guineas a pound, and salmon and 
lamb at five bob an ounce ; it 's no good your persuading 
yourself you can contentedly "do it cheap ;" you can't ; all 
that is cheap is beastly ; besides, if you can, your wife pro- 
bably won't; though you may be contented to stand vile 

lodging-house cooking and impertinent sauce 

a la landlady, the woman you marry will most certainly 
prefer French cooking and sauce . . . a la maitre d* hotel! 

But that 's not it ; it 's the fact of the whole business being 
simply detestable ; it 's the fact of your being pooh-pooh'd 
by a lot of monied vulgarians — " carriage people " ! ! ! — and 
sat upon and snubbed by everybody ; it 's the fact that we 
are all envious ; it 's the fact that we all detest being only 
tantalized with the sight of others' comforts ; and it 's the 
confounded fact that the demon impecuniosity — in about 
eight cases out of every ten — brings untidiness in a wife, 



Green Goslings. 127 



and then, by St. Jingo, you get the curlpapers without the 
cutlets, and in place of anguilles a la Toulouse, &c, ankles a 
la too loose, and slippery down-at-eel boots in no time ! 

Reader, in place of a famous sole with sauce tartare, you '11 
possibly catch one, not a famous sole, a Tartar, who '11 want 
to be a femme sole, and then it 's tar tar to all sorts of jolli- 
ness ! 

O dear impecunious but hymeneally-inclined Gosling, 
don't believe all their goody goody twaddle about " Love in 
a cottage ;" don't believe that money doesn't bring happi- 
ness ; don't believe that gold is dross ; don't believe that 
£. s. d.-\$m is wicked ; don't believe this, that, and t'other, 
but — us, when we assure you, confidently assure you, that, 
if you, a possibly corpulent Cupid, would — en homme solide 
— fan up — and keep up — rthe flame on the altar of Love, 
there is nothing on earth so useful, so extraordinarily useful, 
for doing it with as .... a good full purse. 




128 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXIX. 








ti£L 



HYMEN'S link, when supported on bankers' books 
and bullion bags, cheques and consols, riches, roses, 
and so on ; when there are no duns, no bothers, no anxieties 
no complications, no unbuoyed sunken businesses, rocks, 
torpedoes, quicksandifications, maelstroms, shoals, &c, is 



Green Goslings. 129 

all plain sailing enough : the charm of returning home to 
the loving arms of Beauty when the loving arms of Beauty- 
have nice bracelets on 'em ; when the fingers of Beauty 
which twine your hair round 'em (if you 've got any, and 
like having it twined round fingers — we don't) glitter with 
gem-cracks ; when Beauty is nicely got up, in pooty shoes, 
pooty peignoires, flowers and freshness, &c., &c, &c. ; when 
Beauty in fact has lots of money and nothing to do, the 
charm of all this must be immense, no charm we imagine 
can well be much immenser : Beauty will then, if inclined, 
have time to be amused at your amusements ; never make 
a " piece of work " unless it be to knit you unwearably 
gorgeous Berlin wool machines in impracticable colours ; 
make you braces for which you '11 give embraces back ; and 
when you 've been out shooting probably be pleased and 
proud — as we have delineated her above — to .... count 
your game ! 

Ah ! all this, though perhaps not very intellectual or 
useful, must be very delishus at any rate ; but look at the 
other side of the hymeneal medal ; if your Hymenish link 
is not supported as above, if instead of having the fingers 
of Beauty in rings twining your ringlets, the fingers of 
Beauty have to be always darning the children's clothes ; if 
the loving arms of Beauty, instead of being used as bracelet 
expositors, have to become acquainted with the wash-tub ; 
if Beauty, instead of having nothing to do, has to do an 
immense deal ; if there are duns, bothers, complications, 

9 



1 30 Sage Stuffing for 

etc., etc., etc., cum multis aliis quce nunc — as the Latin 
grammar says — perscribere would be a bore ; if in fact 
you Ve no money, look at it then ; when the honeymoon's 
monthly new-broomy roses have fallen, and their greenness 
has gone, and you find your link simply supported on thorny 
stalks, where are you then ? O where are you ? 

Idiots congratulate themselves — whether they can afford 
marriage or not — on being accepted by their poundless 
shillingless and penniless loves, and exclaim, " Oh Rapchar; 
I may kneel hymeneally ! " Boobies ! they forget that that 
which is enough — very likely barely enough — for one is of 
no earthly use for TWO ! They forget that that which is 
of no earthly use for two may possibly — and very probably 
will — have to be enough for 4, 6, 10, 15, or even 20 ! They 
forget that they can not count their olive branches before 
they are at-hatched to the parient stem, and that olive 
branches on a small income are incomebranches of the worst 
sort, as they can not be lopped off ! They forget that the 
ringing of one finger may lead to the — wringing of four 
hands ! They forget that in Poverty the hymeneal haltar 
ties them hands and feet, and what they will have to sacri- 
fice on this same altar to keep it going even moderately 
straight, and to .... " yet brokenly live on ! " They 
forget that by getting spliced, and so made fast, they may 
be utterly un-done ! They forget that it invariably turns 
out for the female marryer — this poor hymenial business — 
all of the "menial" with nothing of the "hy" about it 



Green Goslings. 



131 



whatever, unless she consider it, as we feel confident she 
eventually will, all her hy ! They forget that if, even when 
people are well off, 

" Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim," 
Love's enchanted couple find it just the sim ! 




They forget if the wife should perversely dislike becoming 
a sort of servant-of-all-work, that their chance of a domestic 
donna and bliss, is not half as great as their chance of 
domestic donner and blitzen ! They forget their Missis may 
become their Ne-missis ! They forget that marriage, not 
only in one case, as the Greek has it, but in all cases, is a 
gamwon which, un-like bacon, whether it can be cured or 
not, must be endured ! They forget that though courtship 
makes all things couleurde rose, matrimony frequently makes 
the very same things couleur de rows ! They forget that no 



1 32 Sage Stuffing for 

man can tell whether he really does love a woman until he's 
been married to her for at least two years. They forget 
that an ar-dent, AR-dent, wish for the Sacrament of Mar- 
riage not in-frequently turns to a still more ARDENT wish 
to give each other the sack with-out the raiment ! They 
forget that the very worst cases that ever appeared before 
Sir Dresswell Dress-swell or Lord Penzance had — we must 
presume — HAD — to begin with — a honey moon! And, 
worst of all, the Boobies, the honeyluna-tics, they forget 
that Marriage is such a tremendous goer, a Derby winner, 
a "Gamos" with such staying power, that being once started, 

nothing can by any possibility stop him but death, or 

the long dirty and expensive journey to the 

Wilds of Penzance ! 

Ah, dear boy, how fashions alter ! Society doesn't put 
peas in its shoes now-a-days, it puts 'em in its mouth ; 
scallop-shells are kept for oysters, not for pilgrimising in ; 
hair shirts are obsolete, and have all been made into chig- 
nons and patent friction businesses for opening the pores of 
the skin comfortably ; people don't fast, only go so ; don't 
wear chains unless, at the least, 18 caraters ; and, though 
they do flageolet their neighbours, certainly dorit flagellate 
themselves nor let anybody else do it if they are aware of 
it, no thankee; and as for sackcloth and ashes, where do you 
ever see them except over a coalheaver's head on a wet day ? 
No, no ; the Penance we do now is spelt with a z after the 
Pen, as . . . we marry ... on nothing a year ! 



Green Goslings. 



133 



Ah, Reader, had many an improvident — hymeneally- 
minded Gosling but less hope to begin with, he 'd not be 

hope-less to end with. And if, Reader, instead of 

going to the altar of Hymen, a lot of people would only 
have strength of mind enough to go to to Ma- 
jorca, it would save Majorcawardness to all parties after- 
wards. 




134 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXX. 




A telegram from our Spe- 
cial Commissioner informs 
us that all the probable 
starters for " the great race " 
are on the spot ; and that 
the field will be an unusually 
big one. Midnight betting 
still points to Count Toutlemonde's French-bred mare 
" Bottines " as first favourite ; she is said to have something 
wrong with her heels, but her backers seem pretty confident. 
The Earl of Thompson's " Butler " is spoken of as being a 
regular screw, and as having certainl" something queer with 



ri&W^ 



Green Goslings. 135 

one of his hocks, nevertheless, any money you put on him 
is taken freely. Mr. Rutter Ridjit's " Burlesque " is said to 
look too cart-horsey and leggy, and anything but very fit ; 
a " walk over " is what would suit her ; as it is, she '11 pro- 
bably — break down. " Small Waist" is well spoken off; her 
staying power is hinted at as being immense. Mr. F. O. 
Clerk's " The Toady " may be safely backed to get a place. 
Lord de Jones's "The Outlaw" has been made the sub- 
ject of keen inquiry, as some of the knowing ones pretend 
to think that if he gets a good start he '11 never be caught. 
Mr. Day's colt "Decolletee" has put her shoulder out. 
" Miss Lightsome " has been scratched for all her engage- 
ments. " Lazarus " has been tremendously kicked by his 
stable companion "Dives," and is quite horse de combat. 
" The Vixen " cast a plate on arriving at her quarters ; there 
was not much damage done ; she 's sure to come to the 
scratch. Mr. Senex's "Dowager" is out of the betting. 
Viscount Smith's " Crinoline " looks in a miserable condi- 
tion, fearfully tucked up, ribs coming through her skin, 
over-trained. Prince Piccadeeli will be represented by 
" Grecian Bend :" she is rather too hollow-backed and over- 
knee'd an animal to suit us, but is freely supported at a 
good figure. 

As regards the match between Mr. Foralltime's " Shake- 
speare" (aged), and Mr. British Youth's "The Ballet," 
Shakespeare was nowhere, the mare, although looking as 
stale as possible, won in the very commonest o' canters. 



136 



Sage Stuffing for 



We, however, believe the whole thing was a put up affair, 
as " Shakespeare " was too heavily weighted, whilst " The 
Ballet" carried next to nothing; we feel confident that if the 
old hoss had been properly handled and asked the question 
at the right moment, it would have been quite as hollow a 
thing the other way. 

A pot o' money changed hands over this event. The 
legs got it. 




Green Goslings. 



*37 



Spoonful XXXI. 




0^; 



WE beg leave to defy you, however thoroughly con- 
versant with the French language you may be, to 
find a more perfect Parisian idiom for — real pleasure than 
. . . cham-pagne ! 

Oh, yes, quite so : we know as well as you do that the 
French for rapture is not champagne, but Verve, but then, 
don't you know Veuve is the very best form of champagne ? 
and so we still defy you ! 

Old Moosoo is bad French: "Ay Mousseux " is very good ! 



1 38 Sage Stuffing for 

One of the most agreeable cliques in all Society is — 
Cliquot ! 

We don't so much mind his "silence" and his want of 
sparkle when our friend is " Mumm ! " 

Love is like "Sillery:" with HER, all fiz and sparkle; 
without *er . . . . Silly ! 

Whenever you dine at Greenwich or Richmond, etc., and 
at the next table the lady and gentleman mix their liquors 
freely, and drink champagne cup, moselle cup, sherry wine, 
claret, port, curocoa, brandy, coffee, etc., etc., et cetera, and 
talk and laugh away like anything, do not make their 
acquaintance; but if they have the coffee-room dinner, a 
pint of sherry, and no conversation, you may take them to 
your boosom in confidence — if you want to, and they permit 
it : they are highly respectable. 

Never tell a Government clerk he has .... nothing 
to do ; or you wound him thereby in a Whitehall part ! 

P.S. — Good name for a Home Office or Treasury feller: 
"Whitehall Spark." 

It is not so bad being only a little " loose," it 's the being 
frequently " tight " that is so objectionable. 

If you make a very favourable impression on your first 
visit anywhere .... don't call again. 

If you ever should have the misfortune to " let the cat 
out of the bag," never, NEVER try and stuff her back 
again ; it 's such a mistake, you only make, inevitably make, 
matters forty times worse. 



Green Goslings. 



139 



You are kind enough to say that you consider Saws 
Ubject, Esq., a fool for doing this that or t'other : you are 
wrong, entirely wrong : if Saws Ubject likes it, he would be 
a fool not to do it. Just mind your own business, for of all 
the nasty fruits which grow on the Tree of Evil, perhaps 
one of the nastiest is the meddler ! But if people will only 
sensibly follow our advice, he can be easily squashed : our 
advice is ... . whenever you see people about "to 
have a finger in your pie " make it hot for 'em ! 




140 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXIL 




creatures, for — oh ! that ' 
for external show," for — 



<^^ADY-BIRDS, sea- 
girls, and so on, are 
tremendously in their 
element at the sea- 
side : 

Women go there to 
get married, if single ; 
Women, when mar- 
ried, go there to get — 
shingle ! 

They are very pretty. 
They look very nice : 
their dresses all cut 
each other out ; they 
are exceedingly bril- 
liant ; they are most 
harlequinesque ; But 
"~- r -"""-* . . . they are dear 
relish of realities," that " passion 



Green Goslings. 141 

Oh ! the vast expanse of heaving waters ! 
Oh ! the vast expense of having daughters 

and wives — who insist upon going there — how many 

a husband has laid a burd-en on himself to enable his lady- 
bird to do it, until he has wished — not himself — but them — 
father ! 

"Impressions de voyage :" Footprints in the sands! 

To readers of Bradshaw : Keep your tempus I 

P.S. — Don't say this joke is contimetable ; it is not at all 
contemptable, not in the least. 

The most disgraceful fool in Europe : The Paris foule ! 

Freedom, we believe, did Kosciusko the honour to shriek 
when Kosciusko fell ! quite so ; and she did pre-cisely the 
same thing, only she did it perhaps a trifle louder, when 

omitil tell in love with old Mrs. Grumbleby Creeses 

money, and — married it. 

" Laus Deo Semper ! " yes, indeed ; but we notice that 
most people not only write it, this noble phrase, but prefer 

also to worship it abbreviated : exceedingly 

abbreviated and transposed ; with them it is not Laus Deo 
Semper, nor L. D. S., but . . . £ s. d.l ! 

By the time you see this, in all probability the Tichborne 
case will be over, settled, a thing of the past, nevertheless 
the Solicitor-General will be still as hard at work as ever, 
as he has unceasingly been from the days of . . . Adam. 

Need we say we allude to THE Solicitor-General — 

Love! 



142 



Sage Stuffing for 



Should you be surprised to learn that the voluptuous 
animal below is a new found land dog ? Should you be 
surprised to learn that he is a Wagger Wagger dog ? And 
should you be surprised to learn that, upon the well-known 
principle of the retina of the eye retaining a bit of burnt stick 
in it for more than eversolong, the Wagger Wagger's tail is 
true to nature ? 




You would ? Ah, we thought you would ; nevertheless 
out of all your friends (and if you have any money you have 
friends) not one of them is as sincere, as uninterestedly 
sincere, as your Wagga Wagga, for HE wouldn't wag his tail 
at you unless he loved you. 

It would of course be simply imbesilly to expect your 
relations to wag their tails at you, and overlook, and assist 
to hide, any fault you may possibly commit ; but remember 
this : the friends who do wag their tails at you, and who 
secretly — would have helped to conceal the knife with which 
you had just committed an undiscovered murder, or who 



Green Goslings. 



H3 



would have applauded, as a very clever performance, your 
running away with your best friend's wife, and have rather 
congratulated you as a gay Lothario for doing it, will also 
unhesitatingly be among the first to cut you dead, if — you 
art found out not paying your bootmaker or your laundress ! 

No, no, dear boy ; if you insist upon doing things you 
oughtn't to do, which by-the-bye, though it 's not the very 
slightest use, we recommend you not to do ; if you insist 
upon doing things " under the rose," choose a cabbage rose, 
a large one, for the rose in use at the present era is not one 
quarter big enough, which is a mistake : for you may safely 
rely upon it that of all the sins which Society commits, 
against " the laws " of Society, the most unpardonable, the 

most utterly and hopelessly unpardonable, is being 

found out ! 

O Pious Peruser, is not this true ? but though we may 
abuse our friends, how, how, HOW few of us are there, if 

we were to " make a clean breast of it," but 

would be found .... all dickey ! ! 




144 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXIII. 




H E knee plush . ultra of 
folly is — a lady marrying 
her footman. Folly rather 
more plus ultra than that 
is — a gentleman marrying 
his cook, because she's a 
pretty good cook, and folly 
rather morer pluser ultraer 
even than the last is — his 
marrying her if she 's a 
plain cook ! This is all we say on this theme : we refrain 
from telling the man who enjoys conjugating " Amo amas 
amavey, O such a pretty slavey, a-Mary, to love " and so on 
what our candid opinion of him is ; we have, in fact, too 



Green Goslings. 145 

much Pollytesse to say what is custo-Mary on this appalling 
subject ; we will simply observe and show in our initial how 
astonishingly charming a nice young lady looks when putting 
her shoulder to the wheel .... and ham tart : Bless 
her ! may she be the girl of all periods ! — get your wife, or 
your sister, who, let us hope, can dress a cutlet as welt as 
herself — to do it, and judge for yourself if anything can look 
more deallegtable than that " dresser ; " and then go and 
call on some feller who has married his cook, and see how 
very nasty she looks when making not a pie, but .... 
a lady ! Not only that, but we feel convinced that if there 
is one man in the whole world who would NOT — N.B., NOT — 
get his wife to make him a pudding, grill him a bone, or 
cook anything for him but his goose perhaps, that man is 
he who .... has married his cook ! 

Advice to pretty young ladies about their spoons : There 
is safety in numbers. Many admirers and you rule the lot; 
one, and he — rules you. 

However, young ladies who have many beaux to their 
string — that is, strings to their bow — should make "a knot" 

in one of them, or the whole lot may slip through their 

fingers. 

Let nothing tempt you to marry, knowingly, a jealous 
woman ; let neither boots, beauty, money, shoulders, nor 
connections, tempt you to do it ; but if, having un-know- 
ingly married her, you begin to see her jealousy for you 
dying out . . . . it is a bad sign. 

10 



1 46 Sage Stuffing for 

" Melting moments?" says old Crusty, "melting moments ? 
— Bah ! melting into tears ! " " Orange blossoms ? Non- 
sense I Cupid clothes all his female victims the same : he 
gives them worry antique." 

Milk-sops out of the whey. Ladies don't like spooneys 
and boobies : the female duck — unfortunately for Jierself — 
prefers a sad drake. 

I. O. Hughes's wife says that quite the worst of all 
I. O. Hughes's "short comings" are .... his long 
goings ! 

Let the Germans say " du " to their loves, but don't you 
"du" it with yours, unless there's a lot of"t/iou"s surely 
forthcoming. 

People tell us to " feather our nest !" How can we feather 
our nest, if we 're not worth a penna ? 

The safest branch to feather your nest on is one which 
grows out of a good strong bank. Try the London Joint 
Stock : it is ever blooming. 

The happy mean : Old gent who did not have the plate 
held out to him in church last Sunday. 

Infancy and old age are the same to a T : one waddles, 
t'other .... /-waddles ! 

Reader, we are told that " Love is blind ; " we agree with 

this : he is blind — very blind ; especially when it is his 

interest to be so ; for it is very sad, but if an old boy can 
only come down heavily on a bank, the Cupidinous woman 
don't one bit mind his inability to run lightly on a lawn — 



Green Goslings. 



'47 



as what does she care for his age, his dot-age, provided the 
dot be all right — provided he will kindly for her ... do 
dot and go one ! If he 's a peer, what does she care for his 
appearance ! However, we think, as a rule, she marries her 
man too young ; for if we were a woman — ecstatic thought ! 
— and a filthy lucre'd husband-hunter, or wanted some lord 
or baronet simply for his name, we wouldn't look at a man 
under eighty or ninety — hundred-and-twenty if possible, 
older the better .... don't you see ? . . . less 
long to wait ! 




.ev^¥>^:^ 



148 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXIV. 




F course, dear boy, 
you Ve heard the 
\l saying, that "a fool at forty is a 
fool indeed ;" you know this ; and 
probably will agree with us in thinking that, if he ever 



Green Goslings. 149 

should reach any old age at all, it will most certainly be— 
a green one ; eh ? Well, look at old De Jones for instance : 
that 's his case, his very sad and stchewpid case. 
Sir Walter Scott says 

" Some feelings are to mortals given, 
With less of earth in them than heaven." 

It may possibly be so, but not with old De Jones ; not with 
De Jones, Esq. ; we rather fear he 's more of earth, etc., in 
his ridiculous old composition than most doters ! 

Of course it 's exceedingly wrong, our showing him to 
you in the sanctity of his chamber ; but there he is never- 
theless, and dreaming, dreaming of his adoration 

The Ballet ! 

Mind you, he 's not " a patron of the Drarmer ; " oh, dear 
no ; as for going to see anything really fine, Shakespeare, 
or anything in that way, pshaw ! he 'd as soon think of going 
out for a morning walk in his evening trousers ! As for 
Music, he ignores her unless as assister to her Terpsicory- 
pheeing sisters! as for Handel, Pooh! he prefers sandals; as 
for Mendelssohn, Mozart, etc., Bah ! does he want to sup 
full of horrortorios ? not he ! He 's a balletolater, simply a 
balletolater ! He'd have every dance, as performed by the 
young persons who dress en coryfee, encore if he — could ! he 
applauds — till he splits his gloves, and his neighbours' ears ; 
what does he care ? he would do anything to coryphee-vom 
with the coryphees ! 

Each of the young women — many of them weighing, 



1 50 Sage Stuffing for 

we should say, certainly thirteen or fourteen stones — be- 
comes, in his idea, light as gossummer air : each fat female 
might in his hallucinationated thought have been born on 
Quinquagossamer Sunday: he ignores the celebrated theory 
of the three graces, the graceful, the ^//graceful, and the dis- 
graceful, and believes only in the graceful, and each lady, 
when she puts on her muslins, leaves her individuality, and 
steps forth before his ravished eyes la fine fleur de la haute 
cocoa-tree : Polly and Sookey — wives possibly of the stage 
carpenters or scene - shifters, and mothers perhaps of a 
good, big, dirty (or possibly otherwise) family — remain be- 
hind with their ordinary apparel in the dressing-room ■ — 
where, by-the-bye, they occasionally slap each other — and 
it might be the Lady Mary and the Lady Susan for all 
De Jones thinks to the contrary, who come to prance and 
plunge about before him. 

Alas! alas! alas! (we can't put too many alasses, highhose, 
etc., for De J). Alas ! poooar old Idiot ! poor old Driveller ! 
Had the late lamented Mrs. De Jones (whose portrait — only 
kit-cat, as our space is limited — we promise to give you 
next spoonful) had she been still spared to us, had she not 
been cut off, how different all this would have been. 

Reader, Mrs. de Jones would have taught him not to make 
— an old newdle of himself. She would have taught him — 
mirabilissime dictu — to go through the world — without feet. 
She would have taught him that what we pity in youth, we 
despise when a man gets old enough to know better, that 



Green Goslings. 



15' 



grey hairs merit respect only when they are respectable, but 
that nothing can be more dis-respectable than the wighead 
senile sinner ; and that there is certainly no man in the 
world so thoroughly deserving of chaff, as he who is . . . 
bad-in-age. 

And, Reader, she would most certainly — and with justice 
— have served him, her grey man, as the early Italians served 
their grey-men, their miserable down-trodden gramen, she 
would have pulled him up in his Greeness ! 




152 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXV. 




ROMISES, we know 
very well, are usually 
like pie-crust, only 
" made to be broken " 
— but we keep ours. 
We promised you, a page or two back, the kit-cat portrait 
of poor Mrs. De Jones, who, you may remember we told 
you, had been — cut off. Well, here she is: look at her! 
She must have been a very fine woman. Our pictorial initial 
perhaps is not quite in the pet-of-the-ballet style of the last 
spoonful ; but we consider that, taken as a whole — as a repre- 
sentation of what the French call tooty la bootick — it makes 
a very beautiful drawing nevertheless, 

Mrs. Sophonisba de Robings was — at 19 — only nineteen 
inches round the waist, but very silly; Miss Gwendoline de 
Robings is 19, and only nineteen inches round the waist, 
and very silly ; Mrs. Sophonisba de Robings is now nine- 



Green Goslings. 153 

teen inches, at the very least, round the — ah — top of her 
Balmorals, and just a trifle cleverer. Well, well, who knows ? 
perhaps one of these days Miss Gwendoline de Robings 
may lose Jier silliness, and have as fine an understanding as 
her mother. If you, who are about to espouse her, wish it, 
so do we — ardently. 

Joneskins and Atkings are two jealous men. Joneskins 
is married ; Atkings isn't. The difference between the two 
is this : Atkings sings his wine songs, love songs, and other 
chansongs in peace to his friends ; whilst Joneskins is obliged 
to keep his ridiculous soup-songs to himself! 

From this most highly interesting narrative we may draw 
the conclusion that some men are born bachelors, and have 
no business to marry and go in for the sweets of Hymen ; 
for as honey to the man with defective teeth produces tooth- 
ache, so does marriage to the man who isn't fitted for it 
produce heartburn. 

Mule extraordinary ! Now on private view ! ! Admission 
on presentation of address card. Smithkinson, after one of 
the most extraordinary musical performances on record — ' 
harping on one young lady for three weeks — has now done 
another. He spent two hours under Miss Blanke Dash's 
window the other wet night, playing his concertina ; accor- 
dionly, he thereby proved himself a great ass, and now he's 
a little hoarse ! Poor fellow ! hitherto he had confined him- 
self to sowing only wild oats, but he has positively finished 
now. — He has sewn himself .... up ! 



1 54 Sag e Stuffing for 

Here 's a new name for crinoline : The dress circle ! 

Here's a new name for the Ballet: The un-drcss circle ! ! 

Here 's a new name for the stalls : The eye-land of ankle- 
see .! 1 ! 

Not quite all the world 's a stage, though all the men and 
women may be players. Had Shakespeare lived now-a- 
days, he would, we feel sure, have agreed with us in pro- 
nouncing Society only only Private Theatricals S 

Avoid v/eeping and gnashing of teeth at all times, but 
more especially if you paint, and your teeth are — are — very 
perfect (and expensive) ! 

P.S. — Why don't people who wear false teeth, have them 
sometimes made a little less regular — upon the principle of 
the sensible grey wigs we often see and admire ? 

A word to the liar's friend : Don't believe him, but leave 
him be ! 

Owe a man a grudge if you choose : owe it as long as 
you please, but ; . . . . grudge paying it. 

A truckling- cad, who uses so much courtesy that it 
'enables you the cur to see, is simply like the lamp over a 
billiard-table ; he is used to be over pool-light. 

The hypocrite's mind is for all the world just like behind 
the scenes at the play : it looks so nice and fresh and pretty 
and simple and smooth to the spectators ; w T hilst behind, it 
is only preparations for acting. 

P.S. — When will talking and shouting at the opera and 
theatre be put a stop to ? Why are people allowed to go 
there only to see the music and hear — each other? 



Green Goslings. 



155 



Wait a minute : here 's a P.P.S. We remark that "opera- 
tic fathers " are invariably bass voiced — deeply, profoundly 
base. How is this? as whilst lovers — that is, before marriage 
— they are equally invariably tenors ! We can understand 
disappointed suitors being baritones — that's natural enough ; 
but not why the O.F. should become base. Can any one 
explain it ? Does marriage spoil their notes and take away 
their tenners, that they become thus gruff? — does an occa- 
sional raz/-set-to so scare them, that they lose their false- 
set-to, or what is it ? W T e cant make it out ; it 's verv odd 
indeed. 




P& 



156 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXVI. 



i i 







-^ 



THERE'S a good deal of cackling going on amongst a 
certain class of goose about " Doing away with the 
House of Lords ! " Bah ! Radicalous nonsense ! Who 's to 



Green Goslings. 157 

do it ? May all who try Peerage in the attempt ! for 

" Finis coro7iat opus " is not .... a coronet the 

finest work of man ! 

How many of us would rather get a barren poohpoohy 
lardydardy nod from a lord, than the heartfelt laud of a 
real well-wisher ? 

The flattering sickeningophantic enemies of a rich man 
who snubs a real, though perhaps plain-spoken friend, must 
feel like the mice when they see so many kittens drowned 
dooced glad of it. 

Are you a real live lord, or only one of nature's noble- 
men ? If the former — if you are really a peer — don't go to 
Brighton, because there ladies are always looking forward 
with the greatest pleasure to .... a band on the 
pier, and you don't want to be abandoned — at least, we 
trust you don't. 

His Serene Highness the Grand Duke of Brighton Old 
Stein, or any other heavy swell, is not only a magnate — he 
is a magnet as well .... he attracts the observation 
of the vulgar. 

If " looking down " on people prevented our looking 
people up, how many an agreeable house would be closed 
against us ! 

People give you the cold shoulder because we can only 
presume they want to — pick a bone with you ! 

There is hardly ever such a thing in the world as a real 
accident ! An accident is generally only another name for 



1 58 Sage Stuffing for 

carelessness. We don't recommend the stoopid Paygunism 
of giving 100 guineas for a breechloader, any more than we 
recommend the vile Vandalism of shooting as many tame 
pheasants as you can in one day with it ; but it isrit an 
accident if you give £$ for a Brussels gun, and it bursts in 
your hand. Again, you knew there was a stair-rod loose, 
yet down you come two steps at a time, and get a cropper. 
Do you call that an accident ? No, serves you right. 
Never mind : Howlaway's ointment : two table spoonfuls 
in a wine-glass of water at bed-time ; and, if you wake in 
the night, repeat the dose ! 

If you would do a thing well .... do what you 
like. 

" The commonest of canters : " Al fresco clericals ! 

You may buy a horse for a big figure which isn't worth a 
poney ! Don't. 

The smell of a stable is not very agreeable, and yet a 
sniff of the " white horses " is very healthy. Have some : 
take a few. 

P.S.— N. tremendously B. It is a mistake to call the 
waves " white horses." They 're all mers ! 

The pressure of the wind on the 33rd ult. was 29 lb. 18 oz. 
to the square inch (see morning papers), but poor fat old 
Smith alone knows what its pressure was on him ! P.S. — 
He 's been suffering agony, lumbago-ny, ever since ; but 
then, don't you know, he 's no very great shakes at the best 
of times — or rather he is. 



Green Goslings. 159 



The cordiality (!) with which some flabby-handed people 
grasp your hand is also .... no very great shakes. 

Apropos of shaking hands, fancy what's-his-name, Briareus, 
and the other hundred-handed feller shaking hands : what 
fun they must have been ! 

Tact is a modern Gyges also with a hundred hands, two 
of the most serviceable of which you will invariably find to 
be — humility and deference. 

P.S. — Our servant, we feel convinced, reads our Lem- 
priere, because this morning, when we told him to look 
sharp about something, we heard him mutteringly mum- 
bling to himself, "'E hexpex heverybody to be a Hargus 
with a 'undred 'ands to do heverything in a jiffey ! " 

P.P.S. — Hate people who mutteringly mumble to them- 
selves. If they've got anything to say which they want 
you to hear, let 'em say it out ; if not, hold their tungs. 

P.P.P.S.— They won't. 

Theatrical Burlesque Managerial motto: " Liber tas in 
legibus." 

P.S. — It wouldn't be bad dog Latin for a big opera hat — 
would it? — libertas in legibus. 

We hear people complain of German bands, brass bands, 
boy bands, etc. ; but of all bands, what band can be so 
thoroughly discordant a band, or so perfectly harmonious a 
band, as a husband! 

When making two great ewes of our eyes — far too great 
use of them — and trying too much to do our best to look 



i6o 



Sage Stuffing for 



killing with the gl 'amour of love, we are sometimes only 

too apt to look sheepish ! 

And yet, O Readah,— you yourself must have experienced 
it — how often — oh, how often — do not the eyes save the 
tongue the trouble of speaking ! 




Green Goslings. 



161 



Spoonful XXXVII. 




HEN girl cuts girl, then comes the 
tug of war ! 

But we should like to know 
this : how is it that Miss Lightly 
Vittefille can, with impunity, can 
— and still know Duchesses — do 
fifty things in the flirting flounc- 
ing, flaunting, philandering way, 
any one of which, if done by 
Miss Proper Person, would bring upon her devoted chig- 
non the shrieks, shrugs, winks, whispers, obloquy, back- 
bitings, slanders, upturned noses, yells and execrations of 
all Society ! 

il 



1 6 2 Sage Stuffing for 

Virtue is very often but another name for necessity. 
You, for instance, who pass nearly all your time in writing, 
drawing", painting, pianoing, etc., and get such kudos for 
doing it, you like larx as well as anybody, eh ? if you only 
had time ; but you must be virtuous or — you go without 
your dinner. 

Some one — French feller — says, "Nobody ever believes 
Virtue to be Virtue unless she appears as a bore." " Ennuy- 
cuse" Sir Frenchman, is your word, but we 're not on wi' 
you, sir, because — fortunately — it isn't true: 'twould indeed 
be hard lines if there were nothing for us between the demi 
and the dummy — monde. 

To the pure all things are pure. Well, we don't know ; 
it depends a good deal on the sort of pner ! but there is 
one thing we are quite sure of, which is . . . . that to 
the im-pure nothing is ever impure enough. 

Yes, bread is the staff of life, but how different are the 
sorts of bread we have to put up with. Some of us get but 
broken crusts, whilst others have .... rent rolls. 

A toast : May we never have to drink our own healths 
. . . . in physic ! 

Another toast : May the lover who 's a spoon never find 
he 's not got sugar enough, may the grouts never come to 
the surface, and may he never find .... a stranger 
in his cup. 

Love is to man what the sun is to the sun-dial ; he is 
simply nothing without it. 



Green Goslings. 163 

" They manage these things much better in France ! " 
We talk of " Love," simply love ; they say £ amour ; there 
you rarely find £ amour without his needful £, the article 
he revels in. 

Here's a new name for ladies' cigarettes : Duck-weeds. 

It is very sad, but how many a little duck is a great 

goose. 

If you ad-mire and follow an ignis fatuus over marshy 
places and get " let in," morass you ! 

No man is so likely to be done as he who, considering 
himself " all there," is but only " half sharp." The razor 
which won't shave us may be sharper than one's pocket- 
knife, yet it 's no use at all. However, any one who is done 
twice with the same trick deserves his fate. 

People should be careful how they pay compliments. 
Atkins, for instance, says, " Tomkins has more in his head 
than meets the eye W Tomkins was awfully savage, and 
denied it. 

" Soaring above our nature does no good ; we must return 
to our own .... flesh and blood !" Quite so, or it's 
the two-stool business to a certainty: the — ah — the— ahem 
— the what-you-may-call-it — the parasite, who leaves the 
unwashed mendicant in the hopes of pasturing on the clean 
man, simply gets caught and annihilated for his pains. 

Talking of parasites naturally brings us to the needle of 
the compass, for it is true to the pole ; so, as he deserves 
encouragement, any sort of truth now-a-days being quite a 

n— 2 



164 



Sage Stuffing for 



treat, here 's a lot of polls for him to be true to, and have 
his choice of : — harem scarum idea, isn't it ? Poor old 
needle, S. E.W.N, up whichever way he turns, he'll have a 
young lady ready to meet him, and join him in the matri- 
monial N.E.W.S. 




Green Goslings. 



165 



Spoonful XXXVIII. 




c 



ONSCIENCE," we are told, "makes cowards of us 
all." No doubt, but every one who has little or 
much Shakesperience, must agree with us when we state it 



1 66 Sage Stuffing for 

as our belief that there 's many a man a cur who never had 
a conscience. Look at the anonymous letter-writer for 
instance: what do you think of him? Do you think he 
ever had a conscience, and isn't he a cur ? We ask you 
now, isn't he ? 

" Showing the white feather " is detestable enough at all 
times, but the miserables who dip it in their ink, and use it 
as we describe — and they are equally Gillotty when using 
a steel pen — to stab others behind their backs, are they not 
the veriest dastards modern civilization can boast of ? 

The thief who prigs your watch, or your cigar-case, br 
your handkerchief (it 's the watch they handkerchiefly after), 
though a blackguard, takes his chance like a man of being 
caught, and either well thrashed or hauled up for it ; but 
the snake in the grass, the pitiful sneaking hound who 
steals your friend's love, your wife's comfort, your em- 
ployer's confidence, and who only dares do it because he 

runs no danger — what is he ? The cur only 

ventures to try to perhaps ruin you with a stroke of his 
white feather, because he" can do it with impunity, without 
even the slightest risk of discovery i — because he is safe. 

Really, Printer, what is the use of your having notes of 
admiration and all sorts of other printing gimcrackeries, 
and yet having nothing, positively nothing, to express dis- 
gust ? It 's ridiculous ; make something ; make it big, and 
put it in here ; make something that there can be no mis- 
take about — something that will signify detestation, loath- 



Green Goslings. 



167 



ing, and contempt, and while you are about it, put in tzvo 
of them. Stop a minute, Printer ; we Ve caught sight of 
our own face in a mirror, thinking of this anonymous pen- 
viper, and an exact delineation of its expression saves you 
the trouble of making what we asked, and finishes this 
spoonful without our having to insult any other member of 
the community by even speaking of him on the same page 
as — the anonymous letter-writer. 




1 68 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XXXIX. 




D 



ID you ever read or hear the story of how a party of 
the name of Actaeon caught the dipping dripping 



Green Goslings. 169 

Diana in her al fresco bath, of the terrific fate which befell 
him in consequence of his peeping-Tomness, of how fear- 
fully he must have regretted going to see wimmin swimmin', 
and have hated every damp place even ever afterwards ? 
Did you ever hear this fable ? — because we see a good deal 
of feminine al fresco tubbing and Actaeonising going on 
every morning at the sea-side, and you ought to remember 
the first instance on record of a man's .... going to 
the dogs through doing it — except, by-the-bye, we had 
almost forgotten it — there is a difference : then it took a 
goddess to change what 's-his-name into a stag, for catching 
her in some stagnant or running water ; but, now-a-days, 
there is not the very slightest occasion for her or any other 
supernatural female swell to arrive ex machind to turn a 
man, who systematically makes it his morning's pastime to 
obsurf her bathing in the billows, into a beast, for . . . 
he so indubitably is perfectly capable — as he proves — of 
making one of himself. 

Reader — it is very odd, but some men's entire time 
appears to be passed betwixt — " Delicacies " and in- 
delicacies ! 

Apropos of Actseon and stags, let us beg you to kindly 
remember that your i-ervi are simply servants, and can only 
go a quarter of an hour's walk in fifteen minutes ; they are 
not ^rervi — though we grant you they are dear — to do the 
distance in five. 

When we are at the sea-side, or on board somebody's 



170 Sage Stuffing for 

ship, we are constantly hearing sailors talk of " a nice 
dancing breeze." At Ryde or Brighton, we presume this 
is the breeze that makes the sea to be — a pier-a-wetting. 

P.S. — Odd, ain't it ? but at this season of the year at 
Brighton, Ramsgate and Margate, &c, the wind is pretty 
generally Jew-ess't ! 

Distance lends enchantment to the view ! — lends, you will 
observe, the enchantment which proximity takes away 
again, for as the pearl grey blue of the distant hills is gone 
when we get there, so, but too frequently, vanishes the snow- 
whiteness of that cotton stocking we admired so much 
. . . . from the other side of Regent Street. 

We know a lady with golden hair — so, perhaps, do you. 
We know a lady — bless her ! — with silver hair ; and so, per- 
haps (if you are lucky), do you ; but yesterday, mirabile 
dictu, we had the pleasure of being introduced to a lady 
with real Platina hair ! ! — most wonderful thing you ever 
saw in your life : real, you know, not bought — growing, 
positively growing. It must be very rare. 

Idleness was the mother of Boredom : the active-minded 
man is like a bright fresh clear running stream, not neces- 
sarily a " babbling " one ; the idle, mildewy-brained party, 
au contraire, is like a stagnant old pond, of no use, no 
earthly use but for feeding ducks .... (at Greenwich 
or Richmond), and the ducks are quite right to try and 
clean him out. 

Remember this — the most accidental introduction may 



Green Goslings. 



171 



rule the destiny of a life, and that it isn't what melodrama - 
tists call " villains of the deepest dye " you need mind so 
much — every gosling can see through them : it's villainesses 
of the lightest dye who do the mischief! 

No, we never liked crinoline : nevertheless, we do think 
it might — on occasions — be an improvement. At any rate, 
it would render the female form a trifle less like a statue 
wet than it invariably is now on leaving the ocean, and we 
feel convinced would be most comfortable for natatory pur- 
poses, to say nothing of to a certainty doing away with 
Actaeonising. 




_ — — - — - w^ 



172 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XL. 



UR drawing represents 
what zoologists would 
call "a group of bears 
at play;" they gambol 
in and out of the mouth 
of the cave, their home,. 
happy as the day is long, 
with no thought for the 
morrow, no prescience 
that they will one day 
be put in pots with their 
portraits on the top, pre- 
paratory to their being 
eventually rubbed on 
and into the heads of 
bald humanity. Yes, it 
is very unfortunate, most 
unfortunate, but now, at this particular moment, they are 




Green Goslings. 173 

gambolling z/zside the mouth of the cave, and therefore 
perhaps, as the cave is rather dark, you cannot distinctly 
see them ; but we assure you they are there nevertheless. 
You don't believe it ; you think it 's all fudge ; all gammon 
and spinach ? Ah, dear gosling, that 's just your error : 
you will judge by appearances, and insist upon thinking 
because you don't see a thing that there 's nothing to see ; 
you imagine because you don't understand it, it's not worth 
understanding ; you suppose because all a man knows is 
not swaggered out, he knows nothing ; because everything 
people have is not on the surface, that there is nothing to 
put there ; because a fifty-gun frigate on the horizon looks 
only a white speck, you ignore the millions of ropes, sails, 
men, guns, flags, bilge-water, marlingspikes, lee scuppers, 
and goodness only knows what, all which are there if you 
could see them. Oh, you booby ! Oh, the mistake you 
make : and even more so if you think because all ap- 
pears in the whitened szpulcJier line, fair outwardly, that 
it must be so in reality ! When you bit that apricot yester- 
day, did you bargain for the wopsy inside ? And that new- 
laid-looking egg at breakfast this morning, eh ? what a lot 
of chickenerie may be covered by a white and smooth 
exterior ! So 't is with us all : we won't believe in the quiet 
unassuming man, but insist upon making a confidant of the 
assuming one ; we pooh pooh the sheep, and make a friend 
of the wolf in the sheep's get-up ; ignore that which is, and 
rush headlong to grief through believing in that which is 



1 74 Sage Stuffing for 

not. Sweet youth, remember this, " The knave " is never 
so dangerous as .... when he's " a trump !" 
The Sharper's Paradise: A well-furnished "flat!" 
Who 's Griffiths ? We hope you know, because we don't ; 
haven't the most remote idea ; but people tell us he 's a 
" safe man : " however, whether he is or is not, here is one : 



m 



Let us call him the guardian of our goods ; we 

mean it for a policeman on the key vive, but you may call 
it a padlock if you prefer it, it won't alter his name, it won't 
prevent his being still useful to your safety 

P.S. — His portrait, especially his legs, was two keysily, 
was took very easelly, very easily indeed, notwithstanding 
his feet were going for wards all the time we were doing 
them. 

P. P.S. — A French friend who sees this Peeler, says that 



Green Goslings. 175 

his legs at any rate, whatever his body may be, are mortal 
clay. 

P.P.P.S. — By-the-bye, he spells clay clefs; but never 
mind. 

Apropos of taking portraits, &c, if any one of your 
sketching artist friends should kindly offer to " knock you 
off something in a minute," see that it is neither a ladder 
nor a horse. 

The male heart has been likened to a bad luck .... 
pshaw, padlock, which opens only with a particular word : 
we are told to find that word and enter at our pleasure ; 
quite so : we 've found it : the word is — dinner. No ? you 
mean to say it isn't ? Well, then, it 's money I Bet you 
it 's money : get some one to leave you a couple of hun- 
dred thou., and see whose heart will remain closed to you : 
not many ; certainly not ours. 

Fashionable brown has become for women's gowns, espe- 
cially the tint we call in a cow "dun :" funny we should 
have mentioned a cow in alluding to Buff a la mode. 

New name for a lady's bathing-costume : A sea-weed ! 
Why not ? It 's a sea-gar-meant ! 

Rufflestone, who hates "the water," went out in a boat 
yesterday, to " oblige a lady S " On returning, he was much 
praised for his sea-row-ic conduct ! 

All's fair in love and war! P.S. — That is, if you are 
much bigger and stronger, than the other feller. 

Sad reflection on passing a young ladies' school : As in 



1 76 Sage Stuffing for 

joiner's work a board becomes a door, so in life does a 
boarder become ador'd, and so again sometimes, alas, when 
she ceases to be ador'd does she once again become bored. 

Proper-minded mammas, who bring up their daughters 
in the way they should go, and steadily keep before them 
the idea of the value of an " establishment " and a dolce far 
niente life, will, we feel quite convinced, thank us sincerely 
for the valuable hint given below ; and toy-shop keepers, 
we are rather inclined to imagine, will also find it very re- 
munerative indeed ! 

Here 's a hint for the " establishment " and the DolXce (;) 
funny aint he ? 




Green Goslings. 



177 



Spoonful XLI. 




OME ! — grand old 
Rome! the 
Eternal City — 
and Greece, glo- 
rious Greece — 
the birthplace 
of Phidias and 
Practiseitalittleless, or Praxiteles, or whatever his name 
was, have from time immemorial been the cradles, the 
schools of all that is superb in art, of all that is graceful in 
form. Is it not so ? and who dares say they are not so 

12 



1 78 Sage Stuffing for 

still? for, lookee here — "the Roman fall;" " Romanus 
some ! " The Roman foll-y ! and the Greekly bent one — 
are they bewchus ? They are indeed. 

Miss Thomson likes dark moustaches, and yet Miss 
Thomson don't quite detest fair ones ; and for that reason 
she is glad she didn't live in " Old Rome," because then — ■ 
upon the principle that "all flesh is grass" — all gentlemen 
must have been "grey-men / " 

A false quantity is a thing very much to be avoided ! 
We are not speaking chignonsensically : we don't mean it 
for a plat-e'tude about hair ; but seriously, we mean that the 
man who says " Boerdishyer," or Omphale, or theaytur, or 
Mansolus, or Cree-morne, or Pegasus, or floreat Etona, and 
so on, is simply very wrong, and annoys our ear, but of all 
false quantities a false quantity of — of — onions is the very 
worst, as it not only annoys our ears, but our noses as well 
— one dare not, on nose pas, as the French put it, say how 
much. It is a very painful thing talking to anybody — or 
sitting even within three stalls of him or her at the play — 
who has been drinking bad sherry, or who — who — keeps up 
his spirits ; but if possible the false quantity of onions is 
worse, as it — it — gives rise to great on-I-ons, very great 
annoyance indeed, to non-lovers of that ought -to -.be -for- 
bidden f-root. 

You pronounce the word " Gaelic," " gay-lick," eh ? Well, 
you are wrong : you ought to pronounce it " garlic," for are 
not the Scotch themselves — Call-ed-0-nions ! 



Green Goslings. 179 

Why do people who are not Scotch, who have never been 
in Scotland, who have no Scotch connections, and in fact 
nothing whatever to do with Scotland, why do they insist 
upon perpetually ''being so kind" as to "favour us" with 
songs all about " ganging awar Jammy," and others of the 
same sort ? We don't know any greater bore out than that 
confounded "Jammy" — Jammy forsooth ! Jammy 's a beast-! 

Pound-foolish-penny-wisdom : Giving six or seven, or even 
fifteen or £20 for a gorgeous letter-weighing machine for 
your writing-table, to save you an occasional penny. 

After-thought, and no fore-thought, 
Many a man to grief has brought : 

Yes, and if some women — and men — only knew how 
utterly hideous they look when in a good passion, they 
would certainly think twice, and count twenty, like Tatty- 
coram, before — indulging themselves. 

Ladies, wear French boots if you like ; certingly, by all 
means, if you prefer it, let your boots be cuire t but don't — 
please don't — let your tempers be — queer too ! 

Do you know what you should be chary of letting your 
wife have too much of over you ? eh ? — you don't ? Well, 
then, ass send an' see ! 

Of course we are open to correction, but we think we 
have sometimes found that a moral man is not necessarily 
a pious man, and that a pious man is not, invariably, a moral 
man. 

12 — 2 



( 1 80 Sage Stuffing for 

There ought to be as much rejoicing over one real penny- 
tent, as there is ever is tinder a £50 marquee ; but there 

isn't. Now-a-days we rejoice and kill the fatted calf to 
feed the ninety and nine sinners : the Prodigal Son must 
look out for himself. P.S.- — Alas poor P. S. ! 

Indecision is the bane of many characters, and we never 
see it more painfully exhibited than when a man can't make 
up his mind which side of the pavement to pass you upon. 
If ever two men (it 's not so disagreeable when a pretty girl 
does it), if ever two men look like two fools, it is at this 
most inauspicious moment. Your only chance is to walk 
straight at him. 

Capital place for seeing yourselves — plate glass windows 
— eh, Narcissuses ? You look so contentedly at 'em : don't 
mind acknowledging it ; bless you ! it does not follow that 
though you freely confess your faults, you should quit them 
— oh, deax no, not a bit : don't be frightened. 

SYNONYMS. 

Unpleasant ..... Rather a baw. 
More unpleasant . . . Doocid awkward. 
Most unpleasant^, . . Dayvlish disagreahble. 

P.S.— Though gentlemen talk like this, it don't follow 
that doing it makes a gentleman. At any rate, don't you 
do it, as they 're usually but empty-headed noodles who do. 

Big baccies you goslings have taken to regale yerselves 
with lately. Let 's see — are they £20 a hundred, or only 1 5 ? 



Green Goslings. 



181 



Why not have 'em bigger and stronger and dearer still, eh ? 
Would if we were you — why riot ? — of course ! Make your 
retainers useful. Have not only cab boys but cabana boys, 
two pueri to every puro. They won't object, not a bit — at 
least, as we never yet came across a feller's fellow who wasn't 
delighted to help his master smoke his biggest cigars, dare 
say you '11 find it the same : hope so, at any rate, for your 
sake. 




1 82 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XLII. 




upposikg 



you take it into your head to vaise 
four times running with that charm- 
ing girl Miss de Twister Twister — 
who, by-the-bye, is good at valsing — 
and people begin to look ahemified 
at you, and to ask you, " I say, when 's 



Green Goslings. 183 

it coming off?" or to say, " 'gratcharlay char, ole f'lar, 
when 's the happy day to be ? " and so on, you know what to 
answer, don't you ? You mean to tell us you dorit f Why, 
simply reply .... one good turn deserves another ! 

Church bells : Parson's daughters if pretty. 

P.S. — But remember this, if you marry a positive belle : 
she '11 either make you comparative or superlative to a cer- 
tainty ; we mean your belle will either make you .... 
beller or bellest — beller with woe, or blest with joy. 

P.P.S. — However, we ought to remember that belles are 
only meant for ringing, and ought not, therefore, to be dis- 
appointed if they turn out a trifle — hollow ! 

The depth of a man's hatband, and of the black edge 
round his note-paper, is not a criterion of the depth of his 
grief. 

Pense'e fugitive : How lucky "the mark of the beast " is 
not visible! 

New and respectable name for Burlington Arcadians : 
B. A.'s ! 

People are always saying, " Look sharp ! " They 're 
idiots. Dont look sharp : be sharp without looking it. 

A green youth, whose only ability, perhaps, is incap- 
ability, who is very "well-to-do," is alas, but too often 
considered by his friends only — good to be done. However, 
it is cruel to be kind to him — much kinder to be cruel if 
it makes him smart. 

The military and the marine lobster should both be — 



1 84 Sage Stuffing for 



bowled ; for in either case he is most esteemed and admired 
when he 's-a-lad — bond fide, or only in a shell jacket ! 

When you go out and are not "made at home," make 
yourself at home ; go home. 

How very sad it is, but instead of getting es-steam, we 
frequently only get into . . . . " the hot water ! 

A roaring trade : The costermonger's. 

The bore's art of punctuation is invariably learnt in 
other people's houses : he won't learn to stop . . . . at 
home. 

The original bore : The serpent, the snake in the grass, 
the unguis in herbd who first brought Eve anguish, in 
her-bd-hies ! 

If you are about to be kicked out of any place, leave the 
room before they begin ! This sounds as if we were chaffing 
you — doesn't it ? but we are not— not at all ; we are quite 
as serious as we usually are. We mean this : supposing 
either your inamorata, or your friend, or your tailor is getting 
sick of you — get sick of them first ; and then, don't you see, 
you are not humiliated, but . . . ■ . they ure / This is 
Christian, we think, quite en regie, eh ? 

Self-denial is said to be a virtue. We deny it — we deny 
it emphatically : for instance, saying "'not at home," when 
you 're at lunch, is a crammer ! 

Jones hates Robinson, and always takes every oppor- 
tunity of running him down, but the other day, at Christie's 
sale of the Duke of Ditchwater's gimcracks, &c, we sup- 



Green Goslings. 185 

pose he must have relented, as he took every opportunity 
of .... ah ... . running him up ! 

The early bird (? swallow) picks up the worm ; it 's the 
late bird who gets picked up himself. 

Are you a racing man ? Well, then, if you would avoid 
becoming quite horse de combat — if you would not leave 
yourself only a miserable life-long nightmare — and if you 
would not take all the gelding off your gingerbread, — don't, 
when you have found a mare's nest, don't .... lay 
ponies on it ! ! ! 

Motto for the tops of the bears-grease pots : Bear and 
for bare ! 

We have a sort of a vague impression of having been 
told, or of having read or dreamt, that some adventurous 
M.P. — little Smirk perhaps — was going to bring in a bill to 
make it fellowny for any widow to get married in any town 
or village, the population of which was under 500,000, until 
all the presentable girls over twenty-five were provided for 
therein ! We don't believe that bill will ever become law ; 
for of all females, the Fast Young Widow is perhaps the 
indiwidowal men admire with most awidowty; therefore we 
take this opportunity of observing that for their sakes as 
well as hers, we are glad Didoism, Sutteeism, &c., are not 
de rigeur in England : we are glad the F. Y. W. has not to 
immolate herself on any funeral pyres, to turn herself into 
an Indian, that is, a fire-indian, (you Hindostan what we 
mean), and thereby — put herself out. But whilst thus as- 



1 86 



Sage Stuffing for 



suring her of our gladness that such a burning shame is not 
our law, we do nevertheless rather wish she wouldn't look 
quite so ready to light a Hymen's torcher for somebody 
else! 

Does the cap by any chance fit you> ma'am, very becom- 
ingly ? Well, then, you have our free permission to . „ 
. . wear it. 










Green Goslings. 



i8 7 



Spoonful XLIII. 




AITHFUL to her 

charge is pretty 
Miss Amy Cherry's 
chaperoneous 
maiden aunt — that 
is, as faithful as she 
is permitted to be, 
two being com- 
pany, three none — 
and rather than that 
her sweet niece 
should be debarred her innocent amusements, she braves 
the elements ; for you will observe that she is walking in 
the wind — a high one. Heroic lady! her chignon, for- 
tunately securely fastened on by strong elastic ligaments, 
is blown as far from her head as the stretching powers of 



<yj& 



1 88 Sage Stuffing for 

the said ligaments permit ; and yet she minds it not : 
when the wind lulls, as it will almost immediately, let us 
sincerely hope her brains may not be dashed out by the 
sudden return of her ornamental head-dress to its proper 
position. Well, she walks here, and has to brave this dis- 
comfort, this, we may say, dangerous discomfort, simply 
because Miss A. C. likes flirting with young Fitzcoupons ; 
and, what is more, she may go on walking there in the 
wind : what do they care ? She be blown ! who thinks 
of the sacrifices, bunions, boredoms, damp feet, late hours, 
&c, &c, &c, of the chaperone, the poor, unamused, 
uncared-for, and yet indispensable chaperone ? And so 
'tis with all the little lads and lasses of tender rage: 
boys of eighteen or so think only of themselves, and are 
never so happy as when flirting with -the little lasses, and 
what fine specimens of little asses they thereby make of 
themselves, eh ? Ah ! spare the rod and spoil the child is 
a whacks him .... pshaw ! maxim .... a 
most anterosting maxim, one should very especially and 
sternly apply to the youthful devotees of that idiot Cupid, 
for they want it. They want it very much. Usher-by 
Booby, on the tree — (a good big birch) — top, might be 
quoted and acted on with advantage long after they leave 
the nursery ; but if you find that sort of a rod is only as 

good as a wink to your blind puppy, we should, for a 

change, give him a good punch on the head, for there is no 
earthly doubt, as our cookeress would put it, but that manv 



Green Goslings. 189 

a fine bird has been spoiled simply for the want of a 

basting. 

De Vaudeville Tompkins is precisely the sort of person 
usually described by novelists as " a man of imposing 
presence!" Ha, ha! you have only got to talk to him for 
about five minutes to quite easily understand why . . . 
lie is an impostor. 

A dear friend : A sponge ! 

P.S. — You mustn't throw him up ; it 's actionable : but 
you may throw him over. Do. 

P.P.S. — Pity bores are so slow; wish they'd more "go." 

The cabman's and umbrella-maker's motto : Make hay 
whilst the sun don't shine ! but the undertaker is better off 
than either of them, and makes his hay by the hundred 
acres whether it shines or not. 

Never bet for gold : never do it for anything but shil- 
lings, introduce the "j" system, and then a bet is best ; but 
keep on with the £ and you soon won't have a shilling to 
accom-penny you. 

What good-looking girls there are in some of the hair- 
dressers' shops ! P.S. — We merely mention this fact be- 
cause it so fully accounts for the masculine jeimesse dore of 
the present era going about with its hair cut like a con- 
vict's you see, they go very often to the hair- 

cuttersV 

Cogitating thus how frequently youthful folly requires 
''putting in the corner" leads us on to making one observa- 



190 Sage Stuffing for 



tion on the science of minding your q's, whatever you do 
with your p's, leads us in fact to — - — Billiards. 

Yes, there can be no doubt about it, Billiards is a noble 
game ! and the amount of attention some men pay to it 
highly, most highly, praiseworthy, as irrespective of its 
merits as an intellectual employment for our youth in the 
very nicest sort of society, and its gentle exercise in very 
pure air, rendering anti-billiards pills, &c, quite unnecessary, 
and restcueing us from all chance of taking gold, does it not 
give such excellent and natural opportunities for showing 
off? We do not allude to the showing off of your billiard 
skill, no, not even if you are a second Bowles, and play with 
that professor's consummate ease and elegance, no, but 
• • • • if y° u have satin backs to your waistcoats, and 
your coats lined with silk, none of your beggarly alpaca 
businesses with only silk sleeve-linings, but the whole thing, 
how can you so unaffectedly display them as at billiards ? 
The man with the diamond ring too, what a paradise must 
be billiards to him ! What a bore the non-billiards player 
must find it always having to scratch his nose with his dia- 
mond ring finger to show its water (the ring's, not his nose's) 
to people ; whereas at billiards nobody can, of course, for 
one moment imagine it unnatural for him to poser on his 
cue with the diamond shining well to the fore, the satin 
waistcoat-back resplendent in the rear, and the silk-lined 
garment negligently chucked on to a sofa with the silk out- 
wards — N.B., with the silk outwards ! Silk socks trouble 



Green Goslings. 



191 



some men a great deal to show them sufficiently, and seal- 
skin waistcoats, too, admit of much admiration, and form a 
superb background for the bringing well out of the festoon- 
ment of gold chains with many lockets ; but the sport of 
billiards is THE thing, and the man with the diamond ring 
on his left-hand little finger, and a satin back to his waist- 
coat, and his coat lined slap through with silk, he 's the man 
for billiards. Oh ! how we admire the man with all these 
expensive luxuries, who has the good sense and courage to 
let you plainly see he means to show 'em, and .... 
who does it. 

Look at Pilkington Brouwne : well, he 's going to have a 
game now. Oh ! don I you wish you were going too 




19: 



Sage St tiffing for 



Spoonful XLIV. 




.OOK around you, and tell us if we have 
any chance of getting rid of it : look around you and see if 
we complain without cause : look around you, O Burlington 
Arcadians ; " circumspice," O oiled and curled modern 
Assyrians ; see for your scented selves, O deboshed-looking 



Green Goslings. 193 

Pall Mall Pale Males, O Aldershooters, and then say if it is 
not with us — and apparently as a fixture — in its worst form, 
in its direst shape ..." the foot and mouth disease " 
. . . . Pinched-up feet and painted lips ! 

Pad yourselves out and pinch yourselves in by all means 
if you like it, dear sirs ; pinch yourselves in and pad your- 
selves out by all means if you think it improves you, dear 
madams ; but don't, oh, please, please do not .... 
puff yourselves up ! 

No, all is not gold that glitters : for instance, bracelets 
are occasionally brasslets ! 

Here 's a new name for the Auricommon dyed hair : 
The light fantastic tow ! 

A man of many checks but not one cross : Rothschild ! ! 

Exchange is no robbery ! isn't it ? ah ! the felonious feller 
who said this never changed an English ten-pound note in 
Jerusalem, or he would purrobberbly have altered his 
opinion. 

Mouths are uncommonly like teeth ; most of them can 
be stopped .... with gold. 

In this world " patronage " is everything : it is precisely 
to man what the sun is to the burning-glass ; you 're no use 
without it. 

What "coign of vantage" equals £l ? 

People may say " brevity is the soul of wit," and it may 
be, but our creed is that beef-tea not brevity has something 
to do with it : what lamp, much less that of wisdom, will 

13 



194 Sage Stuffing for 

burn without oil, and what wit is not sharpened by a clear 
soup, a mite of fish, a cutlet and a bird ? Booh ! there 's no 
doubt about it, Beef-tea is the soul of wit. 

P. S.— Beef-tea, etc. ! 
, Don't be too proud of your mental capacities — it 's not 
"nous" that is cared for now-a-days ; it's an 'ouse where 
you can give dinners ; your " noos " may be superb, but if 
you 've no 'osses you 're nobody. 

Kickton Wipptton suffers a good deal at dinner some- 
times from — his wine going down " the wrong way." We 
can only imagine that a good many of his disagreeable and 
mean speeches wishing to come up that way disagree with 
the generous fluid gowing down. It's no joke to him, how- 
ever ; wish it was — a choke. Pah ! we hate him. 

P.S. — Pah ! is not an affectionate term ; not at all : when 
we say Pah ! to a man who is not our father, it 's rather a 
sign we wish he was ! 

P. S.— Much farther. 

Yes, we have always been given to understand that the 
world is round, and we. know that there are some people 
who firmly believe it to be flat ; as for ourself, however, 
though our theory may be original, having travelled a great 
deal, we have come to the sad conclusion that it is ... . 
sharp at both ends ! 

Did you ever go up the Nile ? We did, and found out 
this fact when we got back again, that " the painted goose/' 
said to be peculiar to Egypt, Nubia, and thereabouts, is 



Green Goslings. 195 

not peculiar to Egypt, Nubia, and thereabouts ; oh, de-ar, 
no, you can see her feeding on the banks of the Thames at 
Greenwich, and Richmond, any day 1 

Api'opos of Egypt, travelling, and these lovely wor- 
shipped birds, we may as well mention that a good rule to 
apply to your position in a railway train is ... . in 
medio tntissimns — ibis ! 

Talking of ibises, reminds us of camels, and to assure 
you that though we cannot vouch for it as a fact -that any 
one straw ever did break any camel's back, that thirty-nine 
dozens and a half of " straws " (6\, five buttons, you know, 
7/9 a pair) very nearly broke a certain donkey's bank ; that 
we can vouch for ; we know that to be a fact. 

P.S. — By-the-bye ; camels; did you ever get up to the 
top outside of one ? Awful bad riding, ain't they ? most 
tremendous case of " Packs an' bellow " their being loaded, 
isn't it ? 

Our drawing below represents a gentleman — " living 
within his means!" but as his "means" means absolutely 
nothing, w r e have put him in an empty purse, in fact, gone 
"hammuck-er !" We should not have mentioned it at all, 
only there was an argument in one of the sporting papers 
some time ago as to whether the Jack Snipe does or does 
not sit on a rail, and we thought that our drawing of an- 
other sort of long-billed feller might serve to throw some 
light on the subject ! What we mean is this, that though 
the Jack Snipe may not sit on a rail, the Jack-ass does get 

13—2 



196 



Sage Stuffing for 



up a tree, and that — considering all things — we affirm to be 
infinitely more wonderful. What do you think ? 







Green Goslings. 



Spoonful XLV. 



197 




EADERESS, sweet and 
charming Readeress, the subject we are about not to touch 
upon — the Fates forbid ! — but to write about, is one which 
requires the greatest finesse and delxatesse in the handling 



198 Sage Stuffing for 

but as you, belle dame, yourself will overdo it, our subject, 
in such a horrid way, we trust we may be pardoned if, by 
any accident in following your example, we, in our way, 
should also lay it on too thick. 

The — ah-article we approach thus timidly, with such awe 

and trembling, is is Paint ! Rouge ! ! Bloom of 

Whatshername ! ! ! (Pig-me^nt) Carmine ! Enamel ! " Bleu 
pour Veines," and all the horrid collection of detestable 
and unwholesome compounds sold under fifty different 

names, for the purpose of making the female face 

RED ! for the special purpose of proving .... a 
miss is NOT as good as email f 

When a woman who has once been beautiful, when she 
who might have sat as a model for a painter's angels, when 
she who has been as nearly divine perhaps as earthly nature 
permits woman to be, sees herself, day by day, getting 
more and more and ever more passee, we can understand 
and pardon her weakness in trying to replace on their 
stems once again the fallen petals of her beauty, in trying 
to rebud the roses which the for-ever-past spring-times of 
youth and summers of full bloomyness have withered and 
decayed : when she finds her eyelashes beginning to fall 
out and her cheeks beginning to fall in, her teeth getting 
loose and her breath tight, her waist getting thick, her hair 
thin, her face fade, her figure fat, her eyes and ankles heavy, 
and the bloom which ought to be on her cheeks turning to 
blue M'm which ought not to be on her lips — then we can 



Green Goslings. 199 

understand her going in for " one touch of un-nature," for 
. . . . the hare's foot versus the — crow's, for a little of 
this, that, and t'other, to assist the wreck of her girlhood, 
the remnant of her beauty, to look as well as it can be 
made to, as much like what it was, as possible. Yes, as we 
put five coats of varnish on an old shoe to vainly try and 
hide its wrinkles, and as Dick Swiveller inked his old hat 
to hide Time's white ravages, we can understand this ; but 
we can not understand young girls — fresh fair dimpled 
blooming young girls — doing the same : we can not under- 
stand inking a new hat ! 

We know, alas I that the sort of uprightness so much in 

vogue just now — in this "year of grace," comes from 

the dressmaker — that grace of figure is more important to 
a great many people's swell-being than grace of heart, and 
that being dis-graceful is not much — if at all — worse in 
some opinions than being un-graceful. We know that if it 
were but " the fashion," " the thing," " chic" and some heavy 
female swell — some " comme-il-faut" party — painted her 
face pea-green, sky-blue, lemon-yellow, or Chinese orange, 
that each Mary Ann or Susan, each Louisa and Theresa, 
each Charlotte we meet, would probably paint hers the 

same gashly hue, to be — comme il faut and comme 

elle fansse. But why ? Cui bono ? — what 's it all for ? It 
must be to please themselves, for men are for once unani- 
mous in sneering at, laughing at, chaffing at, in detesting, 
and in setting— no joke meant — their faces against it, and 



200 



Sage Stuffing for 



would tell you, O self-paintresses, if they were honest, and 
not intent on always humbugging you, that whenever they 
see very much got-up faces, lips, eyes, hair, etc., etc., etc., 
etc., etc., etc., they are thereby warned as plainly as if 
" Mantraps " were illuminated in black letters on your 




foreheads, instead of ill-omen-ated in red on your lips and 
cheeks ; and, if conceit were not, as well as Love, Fortune, 
and Justice, blind, you would see the proofs of what we 
say, and acknowledge that whereas femme sotte se cognoit a 
la cotte, it is the simple girl, though she may not look like 
mischief, who — as regards marriage — does the most. 

Readeress, paint is like taking flattery, sal volatile, and 
other stimulants. You get accustomed to it, and think you 



Green Goslings. 201 

can't do without it. You put on a little to begin with, 
then a little more, then a little more, THEN a little more — 
e sempre crescendo, as the music says — go on, on, on until 
you arrive at f.f.f. and your face looks like a Clown's, or 
like the "lean and slippered paint alone," without your 
having the least idea that it is distinguishable, that it is 
rather too loud. But, stop a minute, we beg pardon — per- 
haps we are wrong : we ought to ask is it meant to 

deceive ? is it meant to take us in, or is it put on like the 
"187 1 chignon," without any wish whatever for conceal- 
ment of its shamness ? Do you, O lovely lady paintress 
— do you — can you, for one moment, in this case, believe 

that Use IS second Nature ? Are you weak enough to 

think men don't know you are painted ? Do you put " kohl " 
in your eyes with any hopes of throwing dust in ours ? Say, 
brilliant-eyed bella donna, is it all meant to look like nature ? 
—because, if it is, it don't : not a bit ! it 's a failure — literally 
a miserable little bottle, that is — a fiasco ! Bring a looking- 
glass out into the sun some day, and see the astounding 
enlightenment you will get on the subject of — Use being 
second Nature. 

Again, DO you think it improves you ? Do you ? O 
don't think it does : O dont think it improves you — it 
doesn't. Pray don't make what the lower orders call " the 
bloomin' error" of thinking Charmin' is spelt — Carmin', 
that enamelling is enamouring, and that putting on blanc de 
this, de that, and t'other which don't naturally blanc to you, 



202 Sage Stuffing for 

suits you ? Why paint the lielie ? Why try and do the 
butterfly more butterfly than Nature has already done ? 
Why use " eyebrow pencils " — unindiarubberable, unendur- 
able eyebrow pencils ? Why do it all ? Why, O female 
goose, think it necessary to sally forth in your oie paint ? 
Is it because red is the complementary colour of green ? — 
is there not enough natural fire in your eyes without your 
putting kohl in 'em ? — is not the natural glow of warmth in 

your cheek preferable to any fire-lit powder ? 

Do you do it because you dislike anything "slow," and the 
hare foot is — fast ? Surely, there must be a happy mean 
betwixt the demi and the dummy -monde — between putting 
kohl in your eyes and ashes on your head ; between — pain 
and paint. 

Oh, lave and leave it all off! Don't be talked into buying 
it by those who find your paint and their pay in't ; burn it 
— make your rouge-pot, your pitiful pot aux folles, a pot au 
feu, for it won't wash in any sense. Let us see Nature's 
Tricolor in its sweet and kissable beauty : the red which 
can turn white, the white which can turn red ; and let us 
not ask in win for the blue, but do not let your Tricolor be 
a trickier which wipes off when you — you — dance, runs fast 
when it should stand firm, does its best to make the bright 
and blue ocean which floats you so nicely into a Red Sea, 
cracks when you smile, and when you weep makes you shed 
tears of — Red Paint ! 

Ah, dear Readeress, we are quite aware that by saying 



Green Goslings. 



203 



these few words, we prove ourself a nincompoop, a very 
noodle ; as the man of the world, though he disdain to tell 
you a lie, knows it is much more dangerous as a rule to tell 
people the — Truth ; but, having told it you, don't treat that 

truth as you do your hair, don't— make light of it — dont 

keep it dark ; for, believe us, that with men whose 

love is love, and worth having, there is no such anteros 
as paint ; for, believe us, with men whose admiration is 
worth gaining — Beauty unador/ied 's adored the most ! 

Readeress, there are people who consider that — " sham " 
is four-fifths on the road to ... . shame ! 




204 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XLVI. 




ALK about the dan- 
ger of getting un- 
der the influence 
of the Upas tree : 
Pshaugh ! what 's 
that to the danger 
of getting under 
the influence of the 
Cocoa tree, the 
witching female 
coquetterie ! ! 

Love is said to 
be blind I He is ; 

and the scales he has in his eyes are but too often .... 

banker's balances. 

You know what the male B an' S is, of course ; soda we : 

it 's eau de wie. But what 's the female T an' S, eh ? why, 

tea and scandal ! 



Green Goslings. 205 

How many a lady takes upon herself the place of doctor : 
she gives us ... . cast o' 'er ceil. 

Reader, are you a drinksman and a smokist ? Well, if so, 
remember this — and we are not singular in our opinion — 
that though we don't mind your post-prandial pipes, we do 
thoroughly object to your boast brandyal braggings. 

New name for a deadly poison : Sunkeneye'd of pot- 
house-ium ! — Beg pardon, we mean cyanide of potassium : 
excuse our error; you see the train of thought which led 
to it. 

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder " ! how true this 
is ! there are positively some people we quite like when 
they 're a long way off. 

" Poeta nascitur, 11011 fit" 

And so are . . . gentlemen and wit. 

Odd, isn't it ? — how exceedingly like one parvenu is to 
another parvenu — how peculiarly the mushroom resembles 
the toadstool, eh ? There 's mushroom for improvement in 
both these fun-guys. We are, however, funkgi they won't 
believe us ! Mushrooms, as some wag has put it, are like a 
man in a balloon — everybody they see they look down upon, 
and imagine he looks "uncommon small :" they forget how 
very small they look to everybody else ! Icarus-like, they 
think to soar above every one, forgetting all about the un- 
reality of their wings, and that they are — themselves and 
their wings too — but cham-pignons after all. 

It is so ; and we may add, that though the estimation we 



206 Sage Stuffing for 

are held in by about seventeenth-eighteenths of " Society " 
consists not in the very least by what we are, but solely by 
what we have, if you, a poor gentleman, want to be tho- 
roughly sneered at, thoroughly — not sham-pooh'd (Shoddy 
don't do much in that line) but pooh-pooh'd, thoroughly sat 
upon and treated like dirt, simply because you are impecu- 
nious, you must have the operation performed by a.- parvenu, 
by some nouveau riche who 's invented a patent dust-bin 
and made a fortune ! However, Providence is kind, most 
kind, and to make up for it, has given us this consolation : 
that we know Shoddy, Esq., would give about seventy per 
cent, of his dust-bin booty to be us, and that if he thinks 
us hardly worth speaking to, we don't think he's worth 
speaking to at all, and therefore when he meets us, if he 
will but be half as sparing of his words — especially the H'y 
ones — as he is of his sovereigns, we shall be — mutually, we 
have no doubt — gratified and contented. 

Whatever vices you have, avoid envy and selfishness ; for 
the first punishes you, and not in the very least .... 

the envied. And as for selfishness Bah ! 

Pooh ! the manger dog in the horse's salle a mangy, who 
couldn't eat his meat himself, but yet carefully prevented 
others from eating it, was not only a brute, but a stoopid 
quadroopid into the barking : but perhaps, if possible, a 
more disagreeable brute still than the selfish man is the 
sham generous man! "You like those cigars?" he says. 
" Ah ! I '11 send you a box of 'em." And so on. Does he ? 



Green Goslings. 207 

does he send you a box of 'em ? Not a leaf. However, like 
the scandalmonger, he gets known and loved accordingly, 

for believe us, dear boy, egotism is all my I ! 

You are not perhaps aware that in small foreign hotels 
(and English ones, too, for all we know to the contrary), on 
steamers, etc., etc., etc., they have but one sort of Rhine 
wine, but every possible sort of label : for instance, we order 
Steinwein, you Johannisberg, somebody else Liebfraumilch, 
and so on ; the waiter gives us all the same wine, having 
previously labelled them to suit our wishes. Now, is not 
this precisely what a toady does with his face ? does not the 
beast weep with you and laugh with us at the very same 
thing f Is not that the one-wine-different-labels business, 
eh ? Ah ! hang it all ! we cant help it, but we never see a 
toady without wishing he was .... toe'd : we don't 
use this word in its German sense, goodness forbid, we only 
mean we wish he was kicked. And yet what a lot of toadies 
we all are. You now, for instance — we dare you to deny it 
— if the writer of these humble papers were only a friend 
of the Prince of Wales, or some equally heavy Hyperion, of 
course it wouldn't make any difference in your opinion of 
his powers ? you wouldn't immediately feel a sort of a kind 
of a craving to know him, now would you ? you don't think 
you would incontinently ask him to dinner, now do you ? 
and then, of course quite casually, mention that that feller, 
" don't you know, that friend of the Prince of Wales (or 
Wales is perhaps your way of putting it) who writes those 



208 



Sage Stuffing for 



etc., etc., etc., 's going to dine with me to-morrar," eh ? You 
don't think you would ? you don't think you would then 
find more in him than you thought for? No ? you wouldn't ? 
You mean to say that you would not f Then bless you, O 
Reader, you at least are a man after pur own heart ! for YOU 
are NOT .... a Toady ! 




3^ 



Green Goslings. 



209 



Spoonful XLVII. 




HE moon-rays thickly silver o'er 
The ruin old and grey, 
Whilst lighter star-beams float upon 
The ripples in the bay : 



The pebbly beach gives back again 
The kisses of the waves, 

Which, curling, form a white moustache 
Around the mouth of caves ! 
14 



210 Sage Stuffing for 

They ripple on, they ripple on, 

On, on, for aye, for ever, 
They cover cherished mem'ries o'er, 

And living loves they sever ! 

Each star perhaps shines o'er the spot 

Where monsters horrid keep, 
With dead men's skulls for drinking- cups, 

Their revels in the deep ! 

Ye ghouls ! ye demons ! give me drink 

From out those ghastly cups, 
I 've . . . . got a female dawg at home, 

I '11 chuck yer all her pups ! 

Quite so : no doubt you think this very fine, witty, touch- 
ing, and so on ; but should you not be able, O Maevius, to 

do anything better than this, dont write any more 

poems ; for remember the dictum of the sage, " that though 
every poet may be a fool, it is NOT every fool who is a 
poet!" 

We have been told that there are certain embers which 
never die out till towards the end of a year, and that they 
are November and December; but there is yet another 
ember, which, alas, but too frequently does die out before the 
end of a year : it is . . . . rem-ember. 

A man may Not marry his gran'mother ! ! Who, let us 
ask, in tones of undisguised indignation, WHO was the 
miserable sinner who wanted to do so ? Who was he that 
gave occasion for this tremendous prayer-book law ? Where 
is he ? His gran'mother ! ! The ruffian ! ! ! 



Green Goslings. 



211 



Treasured Reader, we hear a great deal about " the height 
of fashion ; " but what is the height of fashion, eh ? Why 




. . . . heels ! ! 

We knew a man once who got so bored that he bought a 
lot of those counterpanes, you know, common counterpanes, 
nasty heavy things with no warmth in them, that have little 
hard cotton'pills sticking up all over them : well, this feller 
bought seven or eight of them and went to bed and stopped 
there until he had pulled all the little knobs off every single 
counterpane ! Why ? Because he said he had nothing else 
to do and this was a little change for him ! " Nothing to 
do ! ! " Do you by any chance ever say you have " nothing 
to do " ? How about your roving rambling revelling dash- 
ing driving drivelling snivelling grinding shrieking sneaking 

14—2 



2 1 2 Sage Stuffing for 



speaking crying talking walking swimming shooting sailing 
sleeping snoring basking meandering toadying playing dip- 
ping plunging grubbing reading writing drawing lawing 
moaning mourning moving mooning spooning jogging trot- 
ting betting raging worrying stewing flurrying slandering 
standing lying buttering flirting flaunting lounging longing 
loving envying dressing cutting snubbing shopping smoking 
eating praying, eh ? Oh, de-ar fellow, il diavolo tempts 
everybody, but the lazy man tempts il diavolo. Why not 
avoid this lazy fair -e, this lazy alley style ? " A dead and un- 
pleasant fish can swim with the stream, but it takes a live 
one to swim against it," and you never know when it may 
not be necessary for you to look alive at any rate. " No 
one e'er found a happy life by chance, or yawned it into 
being with a wish ; " and it is our deliberate opinion that 
no man need evcy suffer from ennui whose motto is , . . . . 
Ennui go ! 

" Nothing to do ! " Bah ! Time is like a wedding ring, 
or a fried whiting with his tail in his mouth — we can't see 
the end of him, though we all have plenty of warnings to 
show us how he slips away. Don't, O cceci, O dillydallytory 
duffers, despise these warnings because they are small. We 
are not all as lucky as Belshazzar, but our warnings ought to 
be none the less patent to us on that account. Look at the 
little busy bee below — how he improves each shining hour ; 

whilst you stand idly by and simply do the "humming," 

instead of remembering that Time is the party to malce 



Green Goslings. 



213 



much of, for we shall never see him again as he was yester- 
day, and may not see him at all to-morrow ; and every 

tomb-in-its in its tomb is two mimts less time left us to 
make up our mind to do it. 

O baby seconds ! O little minutes ! O bright hours of 
day ! O grey horce hours of night, how do we not waste 
you ! O Time, how are you. not murdered ! but ven- 
geance is thine own, and when the day comes for one of 
those little fleeting seconds to be worth an empire, shall we 
have it spared us ? No, not one. 

Ah, indeed and indeed, well may they say, " tempus 
fugit" and indeed and indeed, well may we add . . . . 
few-get tempus ' 




214 



Sage Stuffing for 



Spoonful XLVIII. 




HERE are 

a number 
of things 
which al- 
ways strike us when we dine out : for instance, we never 
sit next a sweet woman, whether her hair be like the raven's 
or the canary's wing, without thinking of that old old joke 
of " Sweets to the Sweet ; " we never sit next a sour one 
without thinking of tarts to the tart ; we never sit next a 



Green Goslings.. 215 

pretty, well-shaped, trembling one without thinking of — 
— blancmanges anx anges, and we are never helped on with 
our great coat by Jeames de la Pluche without mentally 
ejaculating . . . „ Douceurs to the Dooce ! 

The Bill we all receive with pleasure : The Bill of Fare ! 

Very nice, isn't it ? walking home after dining out, on a 
bright starlit evening, for 't is then, on a fine night, we can 
best realize the infinenight. 

How easily man is upset by trifles ! a new shoe for in- 
stance can make us anewshoeally wretched, or a fly in one's 
eye is very monche in the way. 

Telling a "mauvaise langue" not to abuse his neighbour 
is waste of breath, but telling him he 's libel to be prosecuted 
if he does, may have more effect. 

Reader, the scandalmonger is just like the ermine : he 
— has always a black tale ready for anybody ! 

There is nothing a doctor requires so much and yet so 
thoroughly and entirely could do without as ... . the 
gratis patients ! 

A tour de Nail: Scratching. 

Receipt for doing a heart : Stuff it ! 

P.S. — Is a very light heart ever — a hollow one ? We are 
afraid so. 

Dear boy, how many a man who before marriage was 
looked upon as an angelus y turns out afterwards not to be 
. . . . aii jealous ! ! 

A disappointed siitor : Ha, ha !" an unpaid bootmaker. 



2l6 



Sage Stuffing for 



Hear goslings, it is quite as safe to play with the very 
edgeiest tools, the use of which you are completely unac- 
quainted with, as to talk about things you don't understand, 
you must certainly— come to grief; for as by means of the 




smallest keyhole we can see slap into the next room, so 
through one ignorant remark may you allow people to per- 
ceive your utter and complete ignorance. 

People say that a very loquacious man is generally an 
ass ; it may be so, but Corpo di Whatshisname ! haven't we 
just known reserved fools too, eh ? rather : and of all fools 
what fool can equal the solemn fool, eh ? No one. 

Saying "Haw haw!" and so on, is what the Germans 



Green Goslings. 217 

call — having ein nasal pronunciation : they don't mean 
speaking through your nose, but . . . . like a donkey. 

Wonder; why Messrs. Peace and Loving advertise their 
decoctions as obtainable throughout " the Queendom " ? 
ah ! suppose it is that they being so accustomed to strong 
salts, wish also to show their knowledge of the Salic law! 

No amount of familiarity seems to breed contempt be- 
tween the bon vivant and his plat. 

Nothing greases the wheels of time like .... sweet 
/oil ! Have some. 

Dear boy, it is no joke — making jokes. 

We constantly hear people say, " I 'd give the world for 
this, that, or t' other 1 " Give the world for it ! yes, we 
notice people are always most ready to give away — what 
don't belong to them. 

Gratitude is not only a chimera, but a chimera obscura ! 

The last canard : When a man says, " Mon cher, je suis 
mallard" look out for quacks ! 

How many a widow, like a duellist, has .... killed 
her man ! 

Ladies, excess of trimming don't make you trim . 

P.S. — How is it, zvhy is it, as a general rule, that girls 
with pimples on their shoulders wear their gowns lower than 
girls with dimples on their shoulders ? We want to know. 

Funny idea struck us the other night at the play : how 
lucky it is the musicians choose different instruments ; 
suppose they 'd all studied the drum, for instance, eh ? or 



2l8 



Sage Stuffing for 



supposing they'd all been bassoons, or triangles, or even 
floots : be a bore, wouldn't it ? 

Got bunions ? mean to say you have ? what big, bad 
ones ? poor old chap ! we 're awfully sorry : never mind : 
hide 'em : conceal 'em : . . . . rosettes on your 
BOOTS ! ! ! why not ? eh ? why shouldn't you do it as much 
as your wife, eh ? of course : look very well : try it : velvet : 
we think we 'd have 'em velvet : looks so very rich : put 'em 
on next Sunday, and live to bless us for the suggestion ! 




Green Goslings. 



219 



Spoonful XLIX. 




OW like is the 
farthing doll we 
shy four shil- 
lings' worth of 
sticks at at the 
races — without 
knocking it 
down — to ex- 
perience ! "We 
can, if we like, get it for next to nothing from others, yet 
we prefer to give our youth and money to get it for our- 
selves. Yes, and notwithstanding experience is the most 



220 Sage Stuffing for 



costly article in the world, what, what an immense deal of 
it one has to purchase before having even a very little bit 
of it to show for your money ! 

When trying to listen to faint though lovely strains of 
distant music (most probably only thus lovely because thus 
distant), is there not sure to come rattling past a cab, or 
yelling past a costermonger, or something row-y, just at the 
very moment ? They don't mean it : they don't do it to 
annoy you : they don't know you — you "wish them farther." 
So 't is with taking offence in seriouser matters. The great 
thing is not to steal offence — that is, before you take it, 
make sure it is meant — to be given ; for remember, there 's 
nothing ill-said till it 's ill-taken ; but, if ever anybody 
should positively offend you — kick you, for instance — you 
may be sure it is meant, and being kicked, stern necessity 
obliges you to — hit him again ! Then, for goodness sake ! 
do nothing by halves : let him see you are no near-fight 
at near fighting, but hit him as hard as possible — as 'Any 
says, " Let 'im 'ave it !" and we can confidently recommend 
a spot to aim at, which, on more than one occasion, we have 
found very superior to between the eyes or the bridge of 
the nose : it is — just under the chin. If you fetch your 
offender one there, he will not kick you again for at least a 
quarter of an hour — which will give you time to take a 
hansom, get to the club, wash your hands, cut into a rubber 
or take a ball at pool, and forget the whole beastly business. 

Don't forget this— but to impress upon your memory the 



Green Goslings. 221 



highly important fact how necessary it is, O goslings, to 
avoid getting into a row, unless you are quite capable of 
getting out of it again, we have made you the following 
conundrum : try and remember it. 

If you cannot my first, shun, as you would Myfistawfulis, 
my second, or you will probably be laid, where my whole 
dines . . . . in the road : . . . . SPAR-ROW! 

A coup de vent, a good blow in front, is much more agree- 
able than a kick in the opposite direction. 

A drawn battle : One feller's " sketching it " from another. 

The man who is " utterly without fear " runs an exceed- 
ingly good chance of some day getting his head broken. 

There are two sorts of fighting: fighting, and fighting 
shy ; but he who fights and runs away, isn't half such a 
coward as he who doesn't run away— simply because he 
declines fighting at all ; and yet, we maintain it, after all is 
said and done, it must require a great deal of courage to be 
a thorough cur. 

People talk about " shaking the dust from off their feet " 
when they leave the house of a man who has insulted them. 
Pshaw ! what 's the use of shaking the dust off your feet ! 
Do you think the insulter cares ? — not a bit : not one atom! 
Much better go and call upon him and not — carefully 7^/— 
shake the dust off, before you put your feet up on his velvet 
sofas. That would be much more to the purpose. 

When hitting a man on the nose, see that you don't 

cut your own knuckles. 



222 Sage Stuffing for 

Every man's house is his castle. Pooh ! fancy a castle at 
Putney ! We don't putney faith in this aphorism. 

We frequently hear it said, " Booh ! Tomkins can't hold a 
candle to Smithkins," You ask Tomkins whether he could 
or not, and see if he don't look as if he 'd like to burn his 
house down. 

Thinking that a woman's tongue is, like the bee, often 
laden with sweets, but that, beelike, it can sting, reminds 
us to ask you to sit in your garden any summer's day, and 
observe that as fast as one bee leaves a flower another 
comes to it, and apparently finds every reason to be satisfied 
with his possession : so 't is with men and women : ladies 
apparently possess — equally with flowers — the power of 
making honey — or, at any rate, what passes as honey — for 
any amount of bees. She whom Bee Tomkins has come 
to detest, to positively and absolutely fear ever even meet- 
ing, Bee Smith finds honey itself, until he in his turn gives 
place to Bee Brown, etc., and so on. It 's rum — very rum ; 
but it 's true. Watch for yourself, and you must indeed be 
honey-dew-cated in the art of love if you don't see the truth 
of our observation. 

Remember this, ye amorous goslings : you may be twenty 
times married, but .... you can only have one mother. 

The Persians — we think it was the Persians, it may 
have been the Medes, but we take the Persians for choice — 
were very particular, if we remember aright, in teaching 
their children how to ride, shoot with the bow, and 



Green Goslings. 223 



speak the truth! Yes; and isn't it extraordinary how we 

moderns follow in the Persian footsteps that is, as 

regards the riding ; as for the other two precepts, the bow- 
shooting and truth-telling, we combine them, to a great 
extent, in one, for are we not always at our Talks-of-a-light 
Society, and in doing it do we not shoot with bows whose 
extreme length would have rather astonished Cambyses or 
any other stalwart Persian that ever breathed ? We are. 
We do. And yet, don't you know, the man who tells one 
such quite preposterous bungers must be either a fool him- 
self or, worse, far worse .... take you for one — to 
think you will believe him, to think you are green enough 
to put any belief in his outanouters, which are quite as 
transparent in their falseness as the crackers of our friend 
Mr. Merriman, on the next page, when he says, " Me, Mr. 
Peleeceman ? me take the fish, sir ? me steal the sarsengers ? 
me crib the guce, sir ? I ain't see'd 'ere a one on 'em, sir, 
since the day after to-morrer ! " 

However, we don't want tomorrer-lies, to preach. It has 
always been so from the days of our common mother, belle 
Eve, and we don't belle Eve it will ever alter. 

What nonsense it is for the roundhand copy-books to tell 
us, " Never listen to the man who speaks an untruth." What 
waste of ink ! Why, if one did not, you might almost as well 
go to bed for life ! However, there 's a maxim or two we 
should be flattered to impress on the chronic liar's memory. 
They are very simple, and quite as useful as the one about 



224 



Sage Stuffing for 



the necessity of his having a good memory, if possible more 
so, and their moral is certainly better. They are : 
-v Be most careful, when shooting with the long bow, that 
you don't shoot . , , , over the mark : don't judge the 
veracity of others by your own, and never give the lie : bear 
in mind the fact that the worst person in the world you can 
deceive is . . . . yourself: never draw your long bow 
when, by so doing, you can injure any other person : and, 
oh 1 if you would prosper, remember this — though, unfortu- 
nately, you may be unable to prevent yourself occasionally 
telling people a lie — that it is .absolutely imperative on you, 
O dear liar, to sedulously avoid— always avoid — entirely 
avoid .... ever telling people THE TRUTH !! ! 




Green Goslings. 



225 



Spoonful L. 




m. ***- 



EAR BOY, if you 
have right on your 
side . . . stick 
to it. What is it 
makes the boldly 
burglarious bad 
bandit of Bermond- 
sey quail before the 
eye of A 1, a pos- 
sibly skinny, weak, 
ill-conditioned and- 
shod policeman ? what is it ? Why, that A 1 has right on 
his side! Why, that A i's beat is equally the Beautiful 
Path of Virtue ! We grant you that at this precise moment 
of time the boldly burglarious bad b of Bermondsey is not 
quailing ; no, he is not : we grant you that the peeler held 
tightly, disagreeably tightly, by the garroted artery, is get- 
ting a precious deal the worst of it : we grant you that it 
does occasionally happen that it is so — that the eye of the 
law gets punched and variegated in its natural black or 
blueness, that the arm of the law gets twisted and even 

15 



226 



Sage Stuffing for 



screwed, that the limbs of the law — the lower ones — have 
frequently beastly bad boots to keep them in limb-o ; that 
the tumtum of the law has to ignaw the pangs of hunger, 
and that in fact the law's whole body gets fatigued and 
tired, weary much so ; but this does not do away with our 
maxim, this does not prove that though Virtue gets " sent 
to the wall" now and again, there should be no Virtue; for do 
you think that in the long run Virtue ever goes unrewarded ? 




It never does : lookee there, 



what do you call this 



Green Goslings. 227 



Would the boldly burglarious bad bandit of Bermondsey 
ever get that ? Would the boldly b b b of B ever have 
such billin' and cooin', such bilin' and coo-ookin' as THIS ? 
Pshaw ! lar, maffische, pas de tout, niets, yock, nein, niente del 
tutto, not a bit of it ! ! for it is to Male Virtue Triumphant 
alone such joys are known ! Look at him. Oblige us by 
looking at M. V. T. Regard, if you please, Male Virtue Tri- 
umphant. Is 'e 'appy ? is 'e all there ? is he off his beat 
beat-ified ? is he in a lonely suburb or no thoroughfare noiv, 
or simply suburb himself, quite a-no-ther affair ? does he 
look delighted, policed, overjoyed ? does he find too many 
cooks spoil the broth he revels in ? does he not know, well 
know, that 't is the female cuckoo always turns the nests of 
other birds to her own private uses, and does he never find 
a female cook who does it for him ? — to be sure ! And 
would she step out of her — her — floury paths to dough it 
for the b b b b of B ? would her heart beat behind her stiff 
corset and coarse a-pron for him ? would she employ her 
witcherries, her black art, that is, her black currant art, for 
anything but manly ^zV-chew ? We have already stated, 
emphatically stated, that she would not; that she would 
decline pudding even a finger out to anything which sugar 
faith in its purity — that, in fact, she would .... see 
him farther first. And it is, therefore, with this beautiful 
and interesting moral before us that we say 

Walk, dear boy, O walk ever, in the Paths of Virtue : 
though they be rough and lonely at times, they are more 

15—2 



228 



Sage Stuffing for 



safe travelling than the slippery paths of (V)ice, and the re- 
ward for so doing will assuredly come, sooner or later, in 
some pleasant form or other, be it money, love, or cooking, 
or in the charming self-contentment such behaviour invari- 
ably brings ; and believe us, O believe us, though your pre- 
sent lines be hard, they '11 quickly melt into those soft ones 
which invariably fall in pleasant places, if you will but only 
. . .. .. . take the first turning to the Right, and — keep 



straight on! 




Green Goslings. 



229 



Spoonful the Last. 




EADER, our pen- 
non waves farewell 
to you ; our pen an' 
ink flags ; like the 
humble but busy 
bee, we pull in our 
antennae, because there ant- 
ennae occasion to keep them 
out : Goslings, our cackle-easy scribendi is over; our free 



230 Sage Stuffing for 

and easy friand-ises are finished ; we have reached the end 
of our journey and our paper ; we are about to give you our 

last spoonful, and we are about to write it on your 

tongue ! 

Peruser, we are told that speech was given us to conceal 
our thoughts (stuttering certainly was), but does it ? or at 
any rate, does it conceal them agreeably ? No ; and 't is 
because the concealing our thoughts agreeably is so very 
important an art, so necessary an accomplishment, that we 
venture before leaving you to give you one or two theoretic 
suggestions on the subject, and if you can only practise them 
you are infinitely cleverer than we are. 

One of the great secrets of being considered an agreeable 
talksman consists not so much in being able to apparently 
agree with everybody, as in being a good conversational 
wheel greaser : you don't, we really hope you don't, imagine 
that nine people out of every ten want to hear you talk, do 
you ? not a bit of it ; they don't ; they want you to hear 
them; therefore, when you see your man beginning to run 
down, grease his wheels, wind him up, so to speak, with 
something sweet, and off he goes again 927 to the dozen, 
and thinks you a most charming person ; for remember — 
and this rule applies to every mortal condition — only make 
a man contented with himself, and he 's sure to be contented 
with you ! this in fact is the keystone of the whole business. 

Listen attentively to a clever man (he may say some- 
thing you can repeat as your own), but talk to the fool who 



Green Goslings. 



231 



can't talk as if you thought him a very sharp feller who 
could talk if he liked, and so content him. 

Don't get into the trick of capping other men's stories : 
some fellers would rather you bonneted them in the street 
than capped their tales. 




Do please give your grandmother credit for being able 
to get what there is in an egg out of it as well as you can ; 
but if you must teach her how to do it . . . . see that 
the eggs are fresh. 

Never try to sustain or even listen to two conversations 
at once, it is conducive to lunacy : if you take old Lady 
Flabby down to dinner and Miss Firm sits on the other 



232 Sage Stuffing for 

side of you, be contented to converse with Lady F., and 
don't try and listen as you do it, to what Captain Bond 
Streeter is amusing Miss Firm with : it 's no good, we 've 
tried it, you only get to feel imbecilly and to look it. 

Never laugh at your own jokes, but if you must laugh at 
them, pray wait till others set you the example. 

If you can make a respectable mot don't cast your pearl 
before swine — for the most perfect joke in the world falls 

flat on the unappreciative ear: keep it for better 

men. 

Never repeat a scandal which won't bear /^-repeating as 
coming from you as its author ; never tell the man sitting 
next you that so an' so is a fool for doing so an' so ; the 
man you say it to most likely does the same. 

Never tell people your secrets : people who would keep 
them, don't want to know them ; it is only those who don't 
keep them who are greedy for them. 

Don't, when you fail to see a point or a pun, sit snigger- 
ing feebly and slightly gasping to try and imitate laughing 
enjoyment ; much better to boldly ask what it means, for 
no man in the world yet who did not see a joke ever could 
look in the very least as if he did. 

Remember — that too much flattery tho' well meant may 
be — for its recipient .... over — whelment ! 

Lavater your man before making him your confidant, if 
you would Lavaterwards ! 

If you think a youth will take your advice, be his Mentor; 



Green Goslings. 233 

if he won't, leave him alone ; you only waste your own 
time, and you 're not mentor be his tor-mentor. 

Adapt your talk to your audience and draw them out, for 
as there is gold in the earth, a pearl in the oyster, and music 
in a corny-a-piston, so is there, if you are skilful, fun to be 
got out of the greatest ass in London. 

Never tell people " You don't look very well to-day ! " 
No one, no, no one, not even the hypocondriacest hypocon- 
driac likes it : he enjoys telling yotc he is very ill, but don't 
like you to tell him so. 

Never volunteer your opinion on any subject whatever. 

Don't ride your hobby roughshod over people ; don't talk 
shop, soldiering, sailoring, shooting, balmorals, ballet, bur- 




lesques, &c, to people of opposite tastes : you may be in- 
tensely fond of horses and racing, for instance, but don't 
forget there may possibly be one or even two people in the 



234 Sage Stuffiing for 

world who take less interest in the pedigree and past per- 
formances of every screw you insist upon talking about by 
the hour together than you do ; and if they don't let you 
see they are bored to death with your horse talk, they prove 
themselves far better bred than you are in boring them. 

You should always stop talking when you Ve no more to 
say : we know it is exceedingly difficult, but you should ; 
besides, you would become original, as nobody does it. 

Yxzy dont tell people long-winded, pointless stories whilst 
they are eating their dinner. If they are well-bred people, 
they listen to you, and naturally wish you at Jericho for 
interrupting them ; if they are not, they don't pay any 
attention to you — so what 's the good of doing it ? 

Never start a conversation about " Religion." Faith is 
only represented with a cross owing to the intense crossness 
this subject has for hundreds of years provoked. 

Dress and Babies are safe conversational topics with 
ladies. 

Don't make distitches with a blunt needle ; we mean, 
don't try either in manner or sense to be sharp too bluntly, 
for even though your needle may not have — much point, 
people don't like being prodded with it. 

Remember that " naive'' is sometimes spelt with a K, and 
that now and then naivete is sharp, that knifete may be 
cutting. 

Never, never, never buttonhole a man, nor bonnet-string 
a lady. If you are wanted, you will be remained with ; if 



Green Goslings. 235 



not — though you may be able to out-Nestor Nestor in talk- 
ing — you'll be wished at the very juice: the buttonholed 

or bonnet-stringed one may be expecting to meet some 

one else. 

Being too Satyrical is bad : being too Fauning is worse. 

Never " take a man up sharp," not even when by so doing 
you can "put him down thoroughly." 

Never forget that one of the most unpleasant chasms for 
your friends to have to plumb the depths of, is . . . . 
sarcasm ! 

Remember, soft words do butter parsnips, and avoid, as 
you would Mephisto, " Argument." " The man convinced 
against his will is precisely and most entirely — in fact, 
rather more — of the same opinion still ; " and not only that, 
but suppose you h^at him in arguing, he detests it, and if 
he beats yon, he thinks you an ass. What do you gain 
either way ? 

Bear in mind the fact that, as people prefer talking of 
themselves and their belongings to any other earthly thing, 
you must — if you can stand it (we can't) and wish them to 
think you agreeable — encourage them to tell you all about 
their dogs, cats, cows, connections, horses, houses, aches, 
pains, children, chilblains, teeth, &c, &c, &c, but must 
never allude to yourself, as it 's egotistical — it 's piling up 
the egony : people don't like it, and it } s considered very 
bad form indeed. 

And lastly and above all, O sweet youth, let us implore 



236 



Sage Stuffing for 



you as a friend, if you would be happy and make others so, 
never, never, never, never, never, NEVER forget this— (or 
\ is the nutshell in which lies the whole secret of everything 
agreeable in our mutual intercourse in life — never forget 
that, in " Society," the great thing, THE great thing, is not 
so much the saying what you ought to say, as ... . 
the not saying what you ought NOT to say ! 






§"' " 



I/Mi 






Jk 



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